Home › The Principles of Cookery › Partridges, Salmi of, Cold
Partridges, Salmi of, Cold
Roast a brace of young partridges; cut them into neat joints, and lay them on a dish. Prepare the sauce according to the directions given in the last recipe. When it is sufficiently reduced, strain it, and dissolve in it a quarter of an ounce of gelatine, which has been soaked for half an hour in as much cold water as would cover it. Cover the joints of the partridges with the sauce, let it stiffen upon them, and then arrange them, piled high in a dish, and garnish with the savoury jelly, cut into rough pieces. Time, an hour and a half to simmer the sauce. Probable cost, 5s. Sufficient for half a dozen persons.
This is a Victorian chaud-froid: roast game jointed, masked in its own reduced sauce set with gelatine, and served cold. The whole thing depends on getting the jelly to the right strength, and on the sauce from the preceding recipe, which Cassell's assumes you have already made.
- A braceTwo birds. Modern farmed red-legged partridge run roughly 12-16 oz each; grey partridge are smaller. Two birds stretched to six people means small portions, so treat it as a first course or add a third bird.
- The missing sauce"The last recipe" is not reprinted here; a salmi sauce of this period is generally built from the birds' trimmings, necks and carcasses simmered with stock and wine, then reduced and strained. Any well-flavoured game or brown stock reduced with wine will serve. It must be strong, because chilling flattens flavour noticeably.
- Roasting the birdsA hot oven, 425F, for about 20-25 minutes, breast down for the first half. Since the meat is served cold and will not cook further, take it to 165F at the thigh rather than leaving it pink.
- GelatineA quarter ounce is about 7 g, roughly one standard sachet of powdered gelatine or three to four leaves. That will set roughly a pint of reduced sauce to a coating consistency: firm enough to cling, soft enough to eat with a fork. Bloom it in cold water as directed, then stir into the strained sauce while it is warm, not boiling.
- Masking the jointsThe hinge of the dish. Let the sauce cool until it just begins to thicken and coats the back of a spoon heavily, then spoon it over cold, dry joints set on a rack. Sauce poured on hot runs straight off; sauce left too long sets in the bowl. Two thin coats, chilled between, give a better finish than one thick one.
- The savoury jelly garnishSet some of the sauce, or a clarified game stock, in a shallow tray, chill until firm, then chop it roughly with a wet knife. The Victorian taste was for it broken into glittering irregular pieces around the base of the pile.
- Timing and holdingSimmering the sauce for an hour and a half is reduction time, not a requirement in itself; stop when it is glossy and concentrated. The finished dish keeps a day under refrigeration but should not sit at room temperature, being cooked meat in a moist jellied coating.
- Cost and yieldFive shillings was a substantial sum for a supper dish, which suggests game from an estate or a good poulterer. Sufficient for six as written, more realistically four as a main course.
Salmi (from the French salmis, generally traced to salmigondis, an old word for a hash or medley) began as a way of using birds already roasted, the flesh jointed and finished in a sauce built from the carcass. Served hot it was a restaurant showpiece; served cold and masked in jelly, as here, it belongs to the buffet cookery that dominated late-Victorian entertaining, where dishes had to be prepared in advance, hold their shape on a sideboard and look architectural on the platter. The same technique, cold poultry coated in a jellied sauce, was formalised in professional kitchens as chaud-froid. Partridge was seasonal and plentiful in Britain from September onward, and a brace was a common gift from a shooting party, which is exactly the kind of windfall a household cook was expected to know what to do with.