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PARTRIDGES, BRAISED (a la Bearnaise)
Pluck and draw a brace of partridges, and wipe them carefully inside and out with a damp cloth, cut off the heads, and truss the legs like those of boiled fowls. Put the birds into a stewpan, with two table-spoonfuls of oil and a piece of garlic the size of a pea, and turn them about over a clear fire until they are slightly browned all over, then pour over them two table-spoonfuls of strong stock, one glassful of sherry, and two table-spoonfuls of tomato sauce or conserve, with a little salt, and plenty of pepper. Simmer all gently together until the partridges are done enough, and serve very hot; the sauce should be rather highly seasoned. Time, about ten minutes to simmer the partridges. Probable cost of partridges, 3s. per brace; the price, however, is very variable. Sufficient for three of four persons.
A fast Victorian pan-braise for young game birds, built on garlic, sherry and tomato rather than stock. The chief thing to fix is the timing.
- Ten minutes is not enoughWhole partridges need roughly 20-25 minutes of gentle simmering in a covered pan, or until the thigh juices run clear and the thickest part of the breast reads about 160-165F. The original figure would suit only very small, very young birds; note too that the recipe asks for no more than slight browning over a clear fire before the liquid goes in.
- A braceTwo birds. Oven-ready grey (English) partridge is small, commonly around 9-12 oz, red-legged rather more, so a brace realistically feeds two generously or three modestly rather than the three or four claimed.
- Buying themAsk the butcher for oven-ready birds, plucked and drawn. If you are given birds in feather, hang, pluck and draw them before starting; the recipe's opening lines assume that work is yours.
- Trussing like a boiled fowlThe legs are pushed back and tucked into a slit in the skin at the flank rather than trussed out with string. It keeps the bird compact in a small pan and stops the thighs drying.
- Tomato conserveNot jam. Nineteenth-century conserve of tomato is a reduced, concentrated purée, closest to modern tomato paste. Use about a tablespoon of paste loosened with a spoonful of water, or two tablespoons of a plain passata-based sauce.
- A glassful of sherryA Victorian wineglassful is generally reckoned at about 2 fl oz (a scant quarter cup), though the book does not define the measure. With two tablespoons of stock that gives very little braising liquid, so use a pan the birds just fit, keep it tightly covered and check it does not catch.
- The garlicA piece the size of a pea is at most a quarter of a clove, browned in oil at the start. It is there to scent the fat rather than to be tasted directly, and quantities this small are typical of English recipe books of the period.
- Finishing the sauceLift the birds out and keep them warm, then boil the few spoonfuls of pan liquid down hard for a minute. The instruction that it should be "rather highly seasoned" is the point of the dish: there is so little of it that it works as a relish, not a gravy.
"A la Béarnaise" here points to Béarn in the far southwest of France, the country of Henri IV, rather than to the egg-and-tarragon sauce the name now brings to mind. Cassell's New Dictionary of Cookery was compiled for middle-class British households in the later Victorian decades, when partridge came into the kitchen with the shooting season on 1 September and prices swung wildly through the autumn -- hence the editor's careful note that three shillings a brace is only a guide. The recipe's small quantities of oil, wine and tomato, and its single pea of garlic, show a compiler translating a southern French idea into terms a Victorian English cook would accept without alarm.