Partridge Pie
Dress nicely and divide in halves, rub with pepper, salt and flour, drop in a little parsley and thyme, also mushrooms, if you can get them. Put in a few slices of ham and a pound of veal, cut in slices and placed in bottom of dish. Add the partridges and pour over them a pint of broth or gravy. This will be sufficient for five birds. If you find that there is not enough gravy, add water with a large piece of butter. Place over the dish a good pie crust and bake one hour.
A top-crust game pie of the old school, written for a cook who already knew how to line a deep dish and judge a coal-fired oven. The gaps worth filling are the oven temperature, the doneness of the veal underneath, and where partridge comes from now.
- The hinge: the veal, not the birdsThe sliced veal and ham sit on the bottom and take longer than the halved partridges. Cut the veal thin, no more than about 1/4 inch, or an hour under a crust will leave it tough and underdone while the birds dry out.
- Oven temperatureNone is given. Bake at 375F for the hour, which browns the crust and holds the liquid at a bare simmer. If the pastry colours too fast, drop to 350F and shield the rim.
- "Dress nicely"This means pluck, singe and draw. Birds bought today arrive fully dressed; you only need to split them down the backbone into halves.
- Sourcing partridgeWild grey or chukar partridge is a hunter's bird in most places. Farmed partridge is sold by game dealers at about 12-14 oz each; two bone-in quail or one small poussin substitutes reasonably for one partridge, and Cornish hen halves work if you accept a milder flavour.
- A pint of brothTwo cups. The liquid should come partway up the meat rather than submerging it, which is what you want under a single top crust; a fully submerged filling will boil and lift the pastry. The recipe itself allows for the pint being short, telling you to add water with a large piece of butter.
- Crust and steam"A good pie crust" here is a plain shortcrust or a rough puff laid over the top only, sealed to the rim. Cut a vent, or set a pie funnel in the centre, so the steam does not blow a seam open.
- DonenessCheck the thickest part of a partridge thigh and the veal underneath at 165F. Older game birds may want longer than the hour; if so, cover the crust with foil while they finish.
- YieldFive birds with a pound of veal and the ham serves six to eight generously, with the pie carved out in wedges through crust and filling together.
- Mushrooms and herbsField or cremini mushrooms, quartered, are closest to what was meant. Sauteing them first drives off water that would otherwise thin the gravy.
Game pie of this shape - a layer of veal and ham beneath the birds, a pint of broth, one crust on top - belongs to the broader English game-pie tradition, related to but distinct from the free-standing raised pies of hot-water crust, and it survived into American household manuals like this one largely unchanged. The veal and ham are not padding: lean wild birds give up little fat, and the sliced veal underneath keeps them moist while the ham seasons the gravy, the same logic behind barding a partridge with bacon before roasting. That American books still carried a whole Game section says something about supply. Partridge, quail, grouse and wild duck reached city markets in quantity, sold by the brace, and a cook could reasonably expect to be handed five birds at once. Migratory-bird protection and the decline of large-scale market hunting in the early twentieth century gradually curtailed that trade, which is why the modern reader has to go to a game dealer for what this recipe treats as an ordinary purchase.