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Partridges, Stuffed with Mushrooms
Take a pint of small mushrooms, and clean them by rubbing the tops with a piece of flannel and a little salt; rinse in a little cold water, lift them out quickly, and spread them on a clean cloth to dry. Dissolve two ounces of fresh butter in a saucepan over a slow fire, let it colour slightly, then throw in the mushrooms, sprinkle over them a little salt and cayenne, and shake the saucepan over the fire for ten minutes. Turn out the contents upon a dish, let them get cold, and with them stuff two young well-hung partridges. Sew up securely, truss firmly, and roast or stew the birds in the usual way; send mushroom sauce, or, if preferred, bread sauce, and gravy, to table with them. Time, half an hour or more to roast or to stew the partridges. Probable cost, 4s. 6d. Sufficient for four or five persons.
A straightforward game roast whose only real difficulties are the vocabulary and the fact that the original assumes you know how long a partridge takes. Two things matter: the mushroom stuffing must be completely cold before it goes into the birds, and the birds must not be overcooked.
- "Well-hung"Victorian game was commonly hung in feather for several days or more to tenderise and develop flavour. Butcher-bought partridge today is usually hung briefly or not at all; it will taste milder. Nothing needs adjusting beyond expectations.
- A pint of mushroomsA volume measure, not a weight: an imperial pint of small whole mushrooms comes to roughly 8-10 oz / 225-285 g of button or closed-cup mushrooms. Buy them small enough to use whole, since halved mushrooms give up more liquid and make a wet stuffing.
- Cleaning themThe flannel-and-salt rub suits mushrooms carrying grit and a skin that wants rubbing off. Cultivated mushrooms need only a brush or a barely damp cloth, and the rinse can be skipped altogether.
- Why the stuffing is cooked firstThe ten minutes of shaking over the fire drives off water and concentrates the mushrooms. Skipping it gives a stuffing that steams inside the bird and leaves the cavity swimming. Cool it fully, as the recipe insists, before it goes in.
- Oven heatNo temperature is given; roasting at this date could mean before the fire or in an oven, and the recipe states no setting. Game birds want a hot oven, 425F / 220C, so the skin colours before the lean breast dries; a stuffed bird will need the upper end of the stated "half an hour or more."
- DonenessCook to 165F / 74C in the thickest part of the thigh and check the stuffing has reached the same, since a cold-stuffed cavity heats slowly. Partridge breast is best just past pink; taken well beyond that it turns dry and livery.
- Bread sauce and gravyBread sauce is milk infused with onion and clove, thickened with fresh white breadcrumbs and finished with butter. The "gravy" here would be a thin brown gravy, or the roasting juices lifted with a little stock -- not a thick flour gravy.
- YieldFour or five persons reflects a table where partridge was one of several dishes. As a main course, two stuffed partridges serve two generously or three at a stretch.
- Cost4s. 6d. was a substantial sum, and it covers the whole dish rather than the birds alone; it points to a household buying game in season rather than an everyday supper.
Cassell's belongs to the era when partridge was a genuine seasonal marker in British cookery: the grey and red-legged partridge shooting season opens on 1 September, and dictionaries of the period carry a long run of partridge recipes clustered accordingly, roasted, stewed, potted, in salmi and in pudding. Stuffing a lean bird with something rich and moist is an old solution to an old problem, and mushrooms cooked down in butter appear alongside forcemeat, oysters or truffles; the pairing of game and fungi is often traced to French practice, which dominated English cookery writing at this level throughout the nineteenth century. The instruction to roast or stew is telling: a young bird could stand the spit, while an older or less well hung one was better off in a covered pan, and the same stuffing served either way.