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Partridges, Broiled
Prepare the partridges as if for roasting; cut off their heads, split them entirely up the back, and flatten the breastbones a little. Wipe them thoroughly inside and out with a damp cloth, season with salt and cayenne, and broil over a gentle fire. As soon as they are done enough rub them quickly over with butter, and send them to table on a hot dish, with brown gravy or mushroom sauce in a tureen. Time, fifteen minutes to broil the birds. Probable cost of partridges, 3s. per brace. Sufficient for four persons.
A spatchcocked game bird over coals, which is still the best way to cook a partridge that has not been hung to the point of pungency. Almost everything here translates directly; the sticking points are the bird itself and the fire.
- Sourcing the birdWild grey partridge is not sold in most countries; farmed red-legged partridge and chukar are the usual stand-ins, and a 12-14 oz bird is typical. Two quail or a poussin split the same way behave similarly, though quail need roughly half the time.
- "Prepare as if for roasting"Cassell's assumes the reader knows this means plucked, singed, drawn and wiped rather than washed. A modern cook buying an oven-ready bird has nothing to do but split it up the backbone with shears and press the breast flat.
- A gentle fireMedium coals with the grate about 4 inches above them, or a heavy grill pan over medium heat. Partridge has very little fat and a fierce fire chars the skin long before the thigh is cooked.
- Fifteen minutes, and how to checkFifteen minutes is realistic for a flattened bird, skin side down first for most of it. Go by the thickest part of the thigh reaching about 165F; the breast will be faintly pink at that point, which is correct for partridge.
- CayenneA pinch per bird with the salt is enough to warm the skin without competing with the mushroom sauce.
- Buttering at the endRubbing butter over the hot bird off the fire, rather than basting during, keeps it from flaring and dripping into the coals. Do it on the serving dish so nothing is lost.
- The sauceBrown gravy here means a game or veal stock reduction, ideally made from the heads and any trimmings while the birds cook. Serving it separately in a tureen keeps the skin crisp, which is the point of broiling rather than roasting.
- Yield"Sufficient for four persons" implies a brace between four, which suggests a dish served as one course among others rather than a main. As a main course, allow one bird per person.
- The cost noteThree shillings per brace is a period retail price and has no useful modern equivalent.
Partridge was the workhorse of the British game season, opening on 1 September and sold, as here, by the brace rather than singly. Broiling a split bird was a standard technique applied across small poultry and game, not a dish in its own right: the same method covered pigeon, quail and spring chicken. Splitting a bird up the back and flattening it is what English cookery books of the period called spatchcocking, a word generally traced to Irish usage and often explained as a contraction of "dispatch cock", though that derivation is traditional rather than documented. The instruction to wipe the bird with a damp cloth rather than wash it reflects the period assumption that the cook was handling a bird recently hung in the larder, where water would spoil the skin and hinder browning.