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PARTRIDGE, BOILED (Invalid Cookery)
Partridges are occasionally boiled for old persons or invalids, and they are delicate and tender served thus. Wash them well, truss them as chickens are trussed for boiling, without the heads. Drop the birds into boiling water, sprinkle a tea-spoonful of salt over them, and let them simmer very gently for a quarter of an hour, or if they are old, twenty minutes. Serve them with sliced lemon round the dish, and with white sauce, celery sauce, or bread sauce, accompanied by game gravy, in a tureen. Probable cost of partridges, 3s. per brace. Sufficient for three or four persons.
A plain poached game bird, written for feeding the sick and the elderly when roasting was thought too rich. It works as written, provided you check the bird is cooked through rather than trusting the clock.
- Sourcing the birdsPartridge is sold oven-ready by game dealers and better butchers, mostly red-legged birds, which are reared in numbers; grey partridge is largely wild and much less often on sale. Oven-ready birds are usually somewhere around 10-14 oz each. Frozen birds are common; thaw fully in the refrigerator or the interior will still be cold when the outside is done.
- A braceTwo birds. Game was priced and sold in pairs, hence "3s. per brace" — a shilling-era price with no useful modern equivalent.
- Trussing without headsSome Victorian game was sent to table with the head on; here it is removed. Truss simply: wings folded back, legs tied close to the body with string so the bird holds its shape in the water.
- Simmer, never boilThe hinge of the dish. Water at a rolling boil tears the skin and toughens the breast. Bring to the boil, drop the birds in, then drop the heat so the surface barely trembles.
- Timing and donenessFifteen to twenty minutes suits a small bird, but check rather than assume: the thickest part of the thigh should read 165F/74C, and the juices should run clear. A large or well-grown bird may need a few minutes more.
- Old birdsThe extra five minutes will not rescue a genuinely old partridge — age in game means tough muscle, not undercooking. Older birds are better braised or made into soup; buy young birds for this.
- The saucesWhite sauce here is a plain flour-and-butter white sauce, made with milk or with stock; celery sauce is the same with celery cooked soft and sieved into it; bread sauce is milk infused with onion and clove, thickened with crumbs. Game gravy means a strong stock made from the necks, backs and trimmings, served separately in a jug.
- SaltA single teaspoon over a large pan of water seasons almost nothing. Salt the cooking water properly, or season the birds before serving.
- YieldTwo birds serve two generously, or three to four in the small portions the original has in mind.
"Invalid cookery" was a standing division of Victorian and Edwardian household manuals, and dishes of that kind — beef tea, arrowroot, chicken panada, whey — are the familiar repertoire. The governing theory was that the sick could not manage anything roasted, fried, browned or highly seasoned, so meat was poached or steamed and served with a mild white sauce — plain food, but not cheap food. Partridge was a luxury; recommending it for a sickroom says a good deal about the households the book addressed, where a brace of game birds could be spared to tempt one person's appetite. The practice of boiling game and poultry rather than roasting it was common enough in British kitchens through the nineteenth century, and later faded; the lemon slices and the tureen of game gravy may perhaps be read as the remains of an older way of serving boiled birds at any table, not just the invalid's.