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Salmi of Partridges, with Truffles
Truss two or three partridges. Put them into a stewpan with butter and a few trimmings of fat bacon; add the necks and gizzards, and fry them on a brisk fire for five or six minutes. Withdraw them to a moderate fire, cooking them with live embers on the lid of the vessel; let the birds half cool, and cut each of them up into five pieces, trim the skin away, and place the joints in a stewpan. Fry in butter the livers of the partridges, with two chickens' livers, pound and pass them through a sieve. With the backs and trimmings of the partridges prepare a little gravy. Skim off the fat, reduce the broth to half-glaze, and add to it three gills of brown sauce; let the sauce boil up, and remove it back to clarify; skim again, and pass it through a fine sieve. With this sauce dilute gradually the puree of liver, pour it over the pieces of partridge, which warm without allowing to boil, and dish up. On the other hand, cut some bread croutons of round shape and half an inch thick, make a circular incision on one side, fry them in butter, empty them of the crumb, and fill the void with salpicon of truffles cooked, with a little Madeira and a little melted glaze. Mask the partridges with this sauce, and dish the croutons all round.
A classic French salmi: game birds roasted only partway, jointed, then finished in a rich liver-thickened sauce. The whole dish turns on the last stage, so read that first.
- The hinge: never let the liver sauce boilOnce the sieved liver purée goes into the sauce, the pieces of partridge are only warmed through. Boiling sets the liver protein and the sauce turns grainy and grey; hold it at about 160-170F.
- GillsA gill is 5 fluid ounces in British measure (4 in American), so three gills of brown sauce is roughly 15 fl oz, about 425 ml.
- Brown sauce and half-glaze"Brown sauce" here is espagnole; a good demi-glace or a well-reduced brown veal stock stands in. "Reduce the broth to half-glaze" means boiling the little partridge gravy down until it is syrupy and coats a spoon.
- Live embers on the lidThis is pot-roasting with heat from above as well as below. A heavy lidded casserole in a moderate oven does the same job; the recipe gives no temperature or time for this stage, so judge by the birds. They should be underdone at this point, since they finish in the sauce.
- PartridgesGrey partridge are small birds, well under a pound dressed; chukar are somewhat larger. If you cannot get them, two poussins or Cornish hens are the closest substitute in size and cooking time, though the flavour is much milder and the gravy will be correspondingly weaker.
- Pound and pass through a sieveA small food processor gets the fried livers to a paste in seconds, but still push it through a fine sieve or tamis afterwards. The sinew and membrane will not break down and are what make a liver sauce gritty.
- Croutons emptied of crumbThese are croustades: thick rounds of stale bread, cut with a circular incision, fried in butter, then hollowed out. Fry them in clarified butter so they brown without burning, and hollow them while still hot.
- Salpicon of trufflesA salpicon is simply a fine dice. Fresh black truffle at this quantity is now a luxury few will attempt; preserved truffle peelings with Madeira, or a dark mushroom duxelles, will fill the croustades acceptably, but it is a different dish and worth saying so.
- YieldThree partridges cut into five pieces each serve four generously as a main course, with the croustades set around the dish.
Salmi (French salmis, generally traced to the older salmigondis, a hotchpotch or medley) was a common nineteenth-century treatment for game that had already seen the spit or the oven: the bird is part-cooked, carved, and the carcass and trimmings turned into the sauce that finishes it. It is often described as having begun as a way of using yesterday's roast partridge or pheasant before being taken up by French professional cooks as a set piece of restaurant service, with its liver-bound sauces, glaze, and croustades ranged round the dish. The pairing with truffles marks it as a game-season luxury.