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Partridges, Stewed, with Cabbage
Clean a brace of partridges, and cut them in two; wash well a head of cabbage and quarter it, lay it in a deep pie-dish, place the birds upon it, with slices of fat bacon on top of all. Pour on them a tea-cupful of stock, and season with pepper and salt. Cover closely, and cook for two hours in a moderate oven.
A plain braise in which the cabbage does most of the work, soaking up bacon fat and game juices. The only real decision is how long to cook it, and that depends entirely on the age of the birds.
- A braceTwo partridges, the standard way game was sold and given. The recipe says only 'cut them in two'; splitting lengthwise through breastbone and backbone leaves each half with a leg and a wing.
- Teacupful of stockA Victorian teacup is usually reckoned at about 5 fl oz (a quarter-pint), so roughly two-thirds to three-quarters of a cup. It is not meant to cover the cabbage; the cabbage and bacon release plenty more liquid under the lid.
- Moderate ovenRoughly 325-350F / 165-175C. The dish is sealed, so it is effectively steaming rather than roasting.
- Deep pie-dish, covered closelyA lidded casserole or Dutch oven does the job. If your dish has no lid, a sheet of parchment under tightly crimped foil will hold the steam; losing the steam is what turns this from a braise into a slow drying-out.
- Two hours is for old birdsWild partridge shot late in the season, or an older bird of uncertain age, needs the full two hours to give up. Young reared partridge, widely sold today, may be tender at 45 to 60 minutes and can be stringy by the two-hour mark. Test a thigh and stop when it yields.
- Fat baconThe barding is structural, not seasoning. Use unsmoked streaky bacon or thin sheets of pork back fat; heavily smoked supermarket bacon will dominate the cabbage entirely.
- Salt with a light handBacon and stock both bring salt, and the cabbage concentrates the liquid as it cooks down. Season the cabbage lightly at the start and adjust at the table.
- YieldServes two generously or four modestly, with the cabbage as the vegetable. A halved partridge is one portion.
Partridge with cabbage is a long-established pairing in European game cookery, familiar in French kitchens as perdrix aux choux well before Cassell's collected it, and the logic is straightforward: cabbage is in season through the same autumn and winter months as partridge, and a lean bird with very little fat of its own is improved by long contact with bacon and something absorbent to catch the juices. A young partridge in good condition was generally roasted and served on toast with its own gravy, while a bird that had hung too long or proved older than hoped suited a covered dish with cabbage, where two slow hours could soften it and the strong flavour of the vegetable would meet the strong flavour of the meat halfway. Cassell's New Dictionary of Cookery was compiled for late-Victorian households, in which a brace of birds might well arrive as a gift from the country rather than a purchase.