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Partridges, Cold, Sauce For
Boil an egg until it is quite hard. Let it get cold, then rub the yolk into a paste with the back of a wooden spoon, and with it the flesh of a very small anchovy, from which the bones and skin have been removed, also a finely-minced shallot, a tea-spoonful of mustard, and a little cayenne. When the dry ingredients are thoroughly blended, add, very gradually, two table-spoonfuls of oil and three table-spoonfuls of vinegar. Strain the sauce through muslin, and serve. Time, ten minutes to boil the egg. Probable cost, 4d. Sufficient for three or four persons.
A cold egg-yolk sauce in the older style, closer to a thin remoulade than to mayonnaise. The hinge is the order of work: the dry paste must be perfectly smooth before any liquid goes in, or the sauce will stay grainy and refuse to come together.
- EggTen minutes at a full boil gives a firm, dry yolk, which is what you want here — a soft yolk will not rub down to a paste. Cool it completely; a warm yolk turns pasty and sticky rather than powdery. The white is not used, so chop it as a garnish or set it aside.
- Anchovy"A very small anchovy" in this period usually meant a whole salted fish from a barrel, bones and all — hence the instruction to strip bones and skin. One or two fillets from a tin, blotted of oil, stand in for it; taste before adding more, as the salt of cured anchovies varies a good deal between products.
- MustardGenuinely ambiguous. Cassell's often means dry English mustard powder, which is what a teaspoon of "mustard" worked into a dry paste implies, but made mustard is possible. Powder gives the sharper, more Victorian result; if you use a prepared mustard, hold back a little of the vinegar.
- Oil and vinegarTwo spoons of oil to three of vinegar is very sharp by current taste, and the sauce will be thin and dressing-like rather than thick. The recipe does not say which liquid goes first; working the oil in drop by drop before the vinegar is the safer approach, though a cooked yolk will never bind it as a raw one would. A milder wine vinegar suits it better than a harsh malt.
- StrainingThe muslin catches the minced shallot and any anchovy fibre, leaving a smooth pourable sauce — this is a Victorian preference for refinement, not a food-safety step. Skip it if you would rather have the texture, but mince the shallot very fine indeed.
- Yield and servingThree or four portions means a few spoonfuls each, to accompany cold roast partridge or other cold game. It keeps a day or two covered in the refrigerator; whisk again before serving, as it will separate.
- Cost note"Probable cost, 4d." is a pre-decimal price from the book's own era and tells you only that this was considered a cheap accompaniment to an expensive bird.
Cold sauces built on a hard yolk pounded with anchovy, mustard and shallot belong to a family of Victorian and Edwardian dressings for cold meat and game — the same thinking that produced Cambridge sauce, tartare and the various "sauces for cold fowl" that fill later chapters of books like this one. They exist because of how a Victorian household ate: a roast game bird appeared hot at dinner and returned cold to the sideboard for luncheon or supper, and cold game is lean, dry and needs sharpness. The anchovy is doing savoury work rather than announcing itself as fish, a trick English cookery had used since the eighteenth century in everything from ketchups to steak sauces. The recipe treats partridge as a routine ingredient: Cassell's was written for readers with access to shot game in season, whether from their own guns or the poulterer's.