Clean, singe and draw young partridges. Season and stuff each bird with chopped oysters well seasoned, and sprinkle with parsley. Put a small piece of butter in each bird; place the birds in a baking-pan; cover with thin slices of bacon; add a little hot water and bake in a hot oven until done. Serve with toast.
A lean game bird barded with bacon and stuffed with oysters, from a period when both were cheap. The whole problem is timing: a partridge that is cooked through is usually a partridge whose stuffing has turned to rubber.
- The hinge: the oystersChopped oysters need two or three minutes of heat, not the twenty-five a bird takes. Chop them coarsely, season them and pack them loosely so they steam rather than braise, and accept that they are there for flavour and moisture more than texture.
- "A hot oven"Read that as roughly 400-450F. The high heat crisps the bacon and gets a small bird through before it dries out.
- Buying the birdsFarmed grey or chukar partridge run 12-16 oz each and are widely available frozen or from game dealers. One bird per person. Poussin or quail can stand in, with the cooking time adjusted down for quail.
- "Clean, singe and draw"Most birds sold today come drawn, though game dealers still sell them undrawn or in feather. Singeing removes residual pin feathers and down; a quick pass over a gas flame or a lit taper does it. Check the cavity for fragments of lung along the backbone.
- Timing and donenessA 14 oz partridge at 450F takes roughly 20-25 minutes. Go by an instant-read thermometer in the thickest part of the thigh rather than the clock, and rest the birds five minutes before serving.
- The bacon and the waterBarding is what keeps the breast from drying; use thin unsmoked streaky bacon or fatback, and lift it off for the last five minutes if you want colour on the skin. The "little hot water" is just enough to film the bottom of the pan and stop the drippings scorching, not a braising liquid.
- The toastIn this period the toast under game often meant a slice of bread fried in butter or dripping, set beneath each bird to catch the juices; the recipe says only "toast." Plain dry toast under a roast partridge is a disappointment; fry it.
- SauceThe recipe gives none. Deglaze the pan with a splash of stock or dry white wine, scrape up the fond and pour it over. The recipe does not state a yield; reckon one bird per diner.
Books like this one worked through the calendar assigning a nationality to each day's dish, and the labels were often loose - "French" here signals a manner of cooking, roasting under bacon with a rich forcemeat, rather than any particular regional dish. The oyster stuffing places the book firmly in its own moment: through the nineteenth century and into the early twentieth, oysters were an everyday cheap protein in Europe and especially in American port cities, turning up in stuffings, sauces, patties and soups the way mushrooms might now. Partridge, meanwhile, was the small game bird of the shooting season, and the pairing of a lean autumn bird with barding fat and a moist shellfish filling is straightforward cooking sense: partridge has almost no fat of its own and punishes a dry oven. Serving game on a slice of fried bread set beneath the bird is an older English and French practice, generally traced to the habit of roasting small birds on a spit with bread placed below to catch the drippings.