Two small golden-brown roast birds tied with string on an oval silver platter, strips of browned bacon laid beside them and a small silver sauceboat of pan juices. — Two small barded roast birds on a silver platter with their bacon and pan juices.

Roast Hazel Grouse (1903)

Name: Roast Hazel Grouse
Prep time: 15 min
Cook time: 55 min
Total time: 1 h 10 min
Cuisine: French
Ingredients: 2.5 lb Cornish game hens (about 2 birds); 1 tsp salt; 1/2 tsp black pepper; 6 slices unsmoked bacon or thin pork fatback; 1 tbsp butter, melted; 1/2 cup water, for the pan juices

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Escoffier’s one-line roast hazel grouse of 1903, for the game course of the first Nobel dinner: a small bird barded with fat and roasted hot, with Cornish hens.

By The Forgotten MenuPublished Oct 28, 2026

Recipe makes: 4 servings, half a bird each
Prep: 15 min
Cook: 55 min
Total: 1 hr 10 min

Game hens are bigger than hazel grouse, so they roast for about 40 to 45 minutes at a high heat, against Escoffier’s 15 to 18. Let them rest for 10 minutes before you halve them, and make the pan juices meanwhile.

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Two small barded roast birds on a silver platter with their bacon and pan juices.

The story behind the recipe

Auguste Escoffier gave the roast hazel grouse fifteen words in his Guide culinaire of 1903: use it fresh, cover it well with fat, and roast it for 15 to 18 minutes. At the first Nobel banquet, in Stockholm on December 10, 1901, gelinottes rôties came after the fillet of beef, with an Estrée salad beside them and only the pastry still to follow.

What is a hazel grouse?

A small grouse of the forests of northern and eastern Europe, the bird the Swedes call järpe. Escoffier grouped it with the grouse, the coq de bruyère and the prairie hens. Some of these birds, he wrote, the grouse and the gelinotte among them, “sont d’une incomparable finesse,” of incomparable delicacy, and the whole group was mostly served roast. All of these birds had to be used very fresh, and the grouse, he added, didn’t stand up to travel.

The menu names the bird and no more; the method here is Escoffier’s, from a book that came out two years after the dinner. Nothing in it is from the Grand Hôtel, and his entry assumes a cook who already knew how to bard and roast a bird. Read with its neighbors on the page, his times place the bird by size: thrushes roast in 10 to 12 minutes, a young partridge in 20 and a poussin in 12 to 15. The hazel grouse sits just under the partridge.

Making it today

Hazel grouse is a wild bird and hard to buy outside northern Europe. A partridge is the nearest in size and the one to use if your butcher has it; the Recipe notes give its timing. Our choice for a supermarket is the Cornish game hen, which the USDA describes as a small broiler of one to two pounds, larger than a partridge, so it needs longer in the oven. Thin slices of unsmoked bacon or pork fatback stand in for Escoffier’s sheet of pork fat. On the menu the birds came with an Estrée salad, made here as Escoffier’s celery and truffle Estrées Salad (1903), and the rest of the dinner, from the brill to the hotel’s own pastry, is read course by course in What Was Served at the First Nobel Dinner in 1901?.

Gelinotte. — Doit être employée fraîche. Bien la barder et la rôtir pendant 15 à 18 minutes.

A. EscoffierLe Guide culinaire (Paris: L’Art Culinaire, 1903), Gelinotte, p. 638

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Ingredients

For 4 servings, half a bird each. Quantities are shown as written.

Quantities as written here, for 4 servings, half a bird each.

Cornish game hens (about 2 birds)2.5 lb
Salt1 tsp
Black pepper1/2 tsp
Unsmoked bacon or thin pork fatback6 slices
Butter, melted1 tbsp
Water, for the pan juices1/2 cup

Ingredients as written here

2.5 lb Cornish game hens (about 2 birds)
1 tsp salt
1/2 tsp black pepper
6 slices unsmoked bacon or thin pork fatback
1 tbsp butter, melted
1/2 cup water, for the pan juices

Equipment

Roasting pan with a rack, just large enough for the birds
Kitchen string
Instant-read thermometer
Poultry shears or a heavy knife
Small saucepan

Instructions

Heat the oven to 425°F (220°C).
Pat the Cornish game hens dry inside and out with paper towels. Season them inside and out with the salt and black pepper, and tie the legs together with string.
Lay the bacon over the breasts, dividing it evenly between the birds, and tie it in place with string.
Set the hens breast up on the rack in the roasting pan and roast for 30 minutes.
Snip the string over the breasts and lift off the bacon; keep it warm on a plate. Brush the breasts with the melted butter and the fat in the pan, and roast for another 10 to 15 minutes, until the skin is golden and the thickest part of the thigh reads 165°F (74°C), with the juices running clear.
Lift the hens onto a board, cover them loosely with foil and let them rest for 10 minutes.
Meanwhile, pour off most of the fat from the roasting pan. Add the water for the pan juices, set the pan over medium heat and scrape up the browned bits. Pour it into the small saucepan, simmer for 2 minutes and season to taste.
Cut each hen in half along the backbone with the shears. Serve half a bird to each person, with the bacon, the pan juices in a jug and the Estrées salad beside it.

Nutrition

470calories per serving

Recipe makes: 4 servings, half a bird each
Servings: 4

Estimated per serving (half a bird with skin) from USDA FoodData Central values for roasted Cornish game hen, with a share of the bacon fat and butter.

Recipe notes

Notes

Quantities mentioned in these notes don’t change when you adjust the servings.

Escoffier names no weight, temperature or seasoning, so the bird, the 425°F (220°C) oven, the times, the salt and pepper and the pan juices are our choices, as is taking the bacon off for the last minutes to brown the breast. The doneness temperature follows the USDA’s 165°F (74°C) for poultry. For partridge, allow one bird per person, lift off the bacon after 12 minutes and start checking the temperature at 18 minutes. Chill leftovers within 2 hours.

Scaling changes the ingredients only; pan sizes and cooking times need their own judgment. To adapt this recipe further, try the recipe tool at TuneMyRecipe (opens in a new tab), our sister site.