Partridge
There is an old controversy about the partridge. There is a tract called The Debate between the Heralds of France and England, supposed to have been written by Charles, Duke of Orleans, between 1458 and 1461, and published about 1500. The heralds proclaim against each other the advantages of their several countries; and the French one, when it comes to his turn, boasts that France has great red-legged partridges, while England has none : "And believe me," he cries, "these are delicious birds, fit for the palates of kings and princes." To this day in France the red-legged partridge or bartavelle is considered superior to the grey-legged sort which abounds in England, and always in the market it commands a higher price. When that great gastronomer, Dr. Lister, physician to Queen Anne, went to Paris in the beginning of last century, he made acquaintance with the red-legged partridge, and brought back word that it far excelled the grey kind. Englishmen generally, however, have not been Partridge of this opinion, and some have gone so far as to declare that red-legged partridges (which, by the way, are plentiful enough in the Eastern counties) are not worth eating. It is well that tastes should differ, and that when Jack Sprat can eat no fat his wife can eat no lean. Each one must speak for himself; and I give my vote with the French, in favour of the red-legs. Perhaps the Englishman has a spite against the red-legged partridge, because it does not rise to his gun like the common one, and yields him less sport. The French authorities lay down the maxim that whereas the English or grey-legged partridge is best young, the French or red-legged one is best at maturity.
Roast Partridge.---In England the partridge goes nearly always to the spit, though it sometimes also shows in a salmi-in which case, however, it has still to be first of all roasted. The French are mighty in stewed partridge, and never send any but young birds to be roasted.
They have their perdrix and their perdreaux ; the former being the full-grown birds, the latter the chicks. It is only the perdreaux that ever figure among the roasts in France. It does not follow that the French are right: no Englishman will allow this who remembers that they object to roast duck with green peas, and prefer brazed duck with turnips. But granting that partridges, young or old, are always best roasted, there may still be reason with the French, who seem never to delight more in the bird than when it appears as Perdrix aux Choux-Partridge with cabbage, salt pork, and sausage. Put a couple of birds into a stewpan with butter or good dripping, and pass them over the fire till they take colour, along with a piece of the hand of pork and a couple of onions, nailed with a couple of cloves. Moisten them then with broth, and add two carrots, a bayleaf, and some saveloy. Add also, trimmed, blanched, cut into quarters, and seasoned with pepper and salt, a Savoy cabbage; and Pastry let all simmer together for an hour and a half. Then drain the cabbage and make a low hayrick of it upon a dish. On the top of the rick, or (for a Chartreuse) in the middle of it, lay the partridges, and round them the sausages and slices of pork, and over all a gravy made of the liquor they have stewed in, assisted, if need be, with veal gravy. Englishmen who are asked to admire this dish, which French cooks elaborate with extraordinary care, lavishing immense ingenuity on the Chartreuse of partridges, have a right to observe that the proverb Toujours Perdrix is eminently French, and would never have been thought of but for the Perdrix aux choux.
The essay wanders, but a workable recipe sits inside it: two partridges braised with cabbage, pork and sausage. The instructions assume you know how a French braise is assembled, so the gaps are worth filling.
- The hinge: use mature birdsAn hour and a half of simmering will reduce young partridge to dry threads. This treatment exists for older, tougher birds, exactly as the text says of the French practice of roasting only perdreaux. If all you can get is young farmed partridge, cut the braise to 35-45 minutes and add the cabbage only for the last 20.
- "Hand of pork"The foreleg and shoulder cut, sold today as pork shoulder or forehock, skin on. Half a pound to a pound is right for two birds. It is there for fat and gelatine as much as for the slices served at the end.
- SaveloyA cooked, lightly smoked, seasoned pork sausage, commonly sold ready to eat in English cookshops. Any cooked smoked sausage of that character does the job; a good kielbasa or a Polish wiejska is closer than a fresh breakfast sausage. Add it in the last 30 minutes, since it needs only heating.
- Onions "nailed with cloves"A literal rendering of oignon clout he whwhole cloves into the peeled onions so they can be pulled out whole later. The text's "a couple of cloves" may mean two in all rather than two in each.
- Broth and quantityNo amount is given. Use enough stock to come about two-thirds up the birds and cabbage in a snug pot, roughly 500-750 ml, and keep it at a bare simmer with the lid on rather than a boil.
- The Savoy cabbageTrim, quarter, blanch two minutes in salted water, then drain and season before it goes in. Blanching removes the sulphurous edge that a long braise would otherwise concentrate.
- Assembling the hayrick, and the ChartreuseDrain the cabbage well and press it into a mound, or line a buttered charlotte mould with it and bury the birds inside, then turn it out. A nineteenth-century chartreuse is a moulded, banded arrangement of vegetables concealing game, not the liqueur.
- Sauce and yieldStrain the braising liquor, skim the fat hard, and reduce until it coats a spoon; the veal gravy the text offers is a body-builder you can replace with reduced chicken stock. Two birds with the pork and sausage serve four.
Kettner's Book of the Table (1877) took its name from Auguste Kettner's Soho restaurant but was written by the journalist E. S. Dallas, which accounts for pages like this one, where an argument about national taste crowds out the cooking. The red-legged partridge the author votes for is the French Alectoris rufa, established in the eastern counties of England after repeated eighteenth-century introductions and still commoner there than elsewhere; the "grey" bird is the native Perdix perdix. Dr Martin Lister, physician to Queen Anne, did publish an account of a journey to Paris in 1698 that dwells on French food, so the anecdote has a real book behind it. Perdrix aux choux is peasant economy raised up by professional kitchens: cabbage, salt pork and sausage carry the bird, and the moulded chartreuse was the grand-cuisine version of the same idea. The tag toujours perdrix - always partridge, meaning too much of a good thing - is generally traced to a story about a confessor served nothing but partridge to teach him a lesson about monotony, and was already proverbial long before Dallas turned it against the French.