This bird, one-sixteenth pheasant, is claimed to have 25 per cent more meat per pound than the average chicken because of its broader breast and meatier thighs. This is in line with the present trend to meatier birds at an earlier age to give an all-purpose chicken for use as broiler, fryer, and roaster. Through some quirk of breeding the dorsal muscle in the leg is while, giving the drumstick a thick layer of white meat. On the hoof, the hybrid looks much the same as any chicken, except for the heavier breast and leg and the tail feathers resembling those of the pheasant. It's in the eating one meets the important little difference, that delicate but definitely gamy flavor.
The new Rock Cornish game hen is an Eastern production. The broad breasts are plumply rounded, the meat finely grained, the flavor combining the sweetness and gamincss of the grouse with the while meat of the finest milk-fed poussin.
Jacques Makowsky of Pomfret Center, Connecticut, is owner of Idlewild Farm and producer of this butter-ball creation. The diet for these “fancy feathers” starts with a game-bird feed to which is added ground acorns and berries to give the sweet flavor. Fish is never included in the mix.
The birds, selling in sizes of 1 to 1 ¼ pounds, are notable for small bones and broad breasts and a slight gaminess to the taste. Some twenty restaurants from Boston to New Orleans feature the new breed.
“From peat and purple heather” comes a unique honey from the Buckfast Abbey Apiaries of Devon, England. Sheaves of hart's-tongue ferns, orchards laden with blossoms, long coast lines indented with sparkling bays. In the center is the plateau Dartmoor and among its rivers “the arrowy Dart.”
About midway between Darthead and Dartmouth is a beautiful valley. surrounded by undulating hills, which for many centuries provided a peaceful setting for a prosperous abbey, reputedly founded by Celtic monks. Certain it is that our Anglo-Saxon fore-fathers, long before the coming of the Normans, sanctified this spot by a life of prayer and work, and called it by the name which ten centuries have not substantially altered. Bucfaesten is the old word for Buckfast, which suggests a safe refuge for the herds of deer frequenting the neighborhood long ago.
In August the countryside is a sea of scented glory; here is mile upon mile of heather where the bees drone endlessly among the drooping bells, bringing to their hives the richest honey known in the world.
When the purple begins to show, the bees are carried by lorries from the quiet seclusion of Buckfast Monastery gardens and placed in groups in the heart of the moor to gather the feast. For a month the work goes on in Devon's purple, then back to the monastery garden with a harvest for themselves and for us.
In the abbey a mighty press extracts the honey from the combs as the delicate cell walls are splintered and flattened to a slab of beeswax. Thick as jam, this honey has the color of a rich orange marmalade and a flavor as delicate as the perfume of a flower. In England they take a spoonful of Devon's cream, a spoonful of Dartmoor honey, mix, and spread on Devon scones. Or they eat the honey with oatcakes spread thick with butter. Have it with toasted English muffins or add a spoonful to the cored hollow of a baked apple or dab it over baked custard.
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