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Two Partridges (Ounces of cooked Rice)
Two ounces of cooked Rice.
One ounce of Butter.
Seasoning. One gill and a half of Glaze.
Yolks of four and whites of two Eggs.
Cook the partridges, remove all the meat from the bones, and pound with the rice, butter, seasoning, and glaze. Pass all through a hair-sieve; then add the yolks of eggs, and lastly the two whites whipped to a stiff froth. Put into a mould.
Bake in a quick oven; serve with a good gravy round made from the game bones.
This is a game soufflé baked in a mould — essentially a partridge farce lightened with whipped white — and the terse ingredient list assumes a professional kitchen with stock already reduced and a tamis on the shelf. A few conversions and one change of oven practice make it workable.
- The gillIn a British book of this period a gill is 5 fl oz, so a gill and a half is 7 1/2 fl oz, a scant cup. American sources often use a 4 fl oz gill; go with the larger figure here.
- GlazeNot a sugar glaze. This is glace de viande: brown game or veal stock reduced until it sets to a firm, sticky jelly, used as both binder and seasoning. Reduced demi-glace or a strongly reduced homemade game stock is the practical stand-in; a stock cube is not, as the salt concentration will wreck the seasoning.
- Quantities are for two birdsThe picked meat of two partridges (only a few ounces from each) is what the 2 oz rice, 1 oz butter, four yolks and two whites are balanced against. The title's odd phrasing appears to be the first ingredient run into the heading.
- Hair sieveA tamis of woven horsehair, used to force pounded meat into a smooth paste. Work the meat in a food processor first, then push it through a fine drum sieve or a sturdy conical strainer — the sieving is what separates this from a coarse forcemeat, so do not skip it.
- Oven temperatureA "quick oven" in books of this period is usually put at roughly 400-450F, though the terms are imprecise. That suited a small mould in a solid-fuel range but can curdle and crack an egg-bound farce in a modern oven. Bake the buttered mould in a bain-marie at 350F until just set in the centre, about 35-45 minutes for a 1 1/2 pint mould.
- Order of workingThe glaze must be cool and the pounded mixture no warmer than room temperature before the yolks go in, or they will scramble. Fold the two stiff whites in with a spatula at the last moment and get the mould into the oven immediately.
- The gravyCrack the carcasses, brown them, and simmer with an onion and a little wine for an hour; strain, reduce, and pour a ribbon round the turned-out mould rather than over it.
- YieldServes four as an entrée in the Victorian sense — a small plated course between fish and roast — or two as a main dish with vegetables.
Late-Victorian professional cookery books treated game as raw material for elaborate remoulding rather than simple roasting, and this dish sits squarely in that tradition: the bird is cooked, boned, pounded, sieved and reassembled as a smooth pale mousseline, the sort of thing an experienced cook was expected to produce for a dinner of six or eight courses. The technique is French in origin " a a soufflé or mousseline de gibier, bound with glace de viande and lifted with whipped white \ the 1880s and 1890s, a period in which the schools of cookery that trained upper-servant cooks are generally said to have leaned heavily on the French repertoire. Partridge shooting opened on 1 September. The habit of using rice rather than breadcrumbs as the starch gives a cleaner, less bready result.