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Removes or Releves: Perdreaux
Partridges braised in stock with bacon, cabbages, etc., are served as Perdreaux aux choux, with the cabbages and slices of bacon.
Perdreaux braisés are larded and braised. à l'étouffade-larded, and stewed in stock and wine with onions, etc. à la Parisienne-cooked in a brown sauce with wine, and served in the sauce.
Perdreaux à l'Anglaise-stuffed with the livers and butter, and roasted. A stuffing of shallots, breadcrumbs, etc., is inserted under each joint, and they are served in a sauce of stock and wine. truffés à la Périgord-stuffed with truffle stuffing and roasted; served in a white sauce with truffles. à la Mecklenbourg-stuffed with chopped French plums, game forcemeat, etc.; braised in stock and wine, and served in the sauce with tomato sauce and currant jelly. à la Barbarie-stuffed with truffle stuffing, and larded ornamentally with truffles; braised, and served with Financière sauce. à la Pompadour-stuffed with foie gras and truffles, larded, braised, and served with truffle sauce. à la Cussy-boned, with the exception of the leg bones, and stuffed with a forcemeat made of sweetbread, truffles, mushrooms and cocks' combs; braised, and served with truffle sauce. à la Victoria-the breast bones removed, stuffed with game forcemeat, larded and braised; served with brown sauce, wine, etc.
Pâté de perdreaux au chasseur is a pie of partridges with veal and bacon, mushrooms, and game sauce.
GROUSE.
Grouse are dressed like pheasants à la Piémontaise. À la Kinnaird, they are stuffed, roasted, and served with Financière garnish.
Pâté de grouse à l'Écossaise is a pie of grouse with beef steak, etc.
Grouse en timbale is a grouse pie baked in a French raised pie mould.
Partridge and grouse. The two treatments the page keeps returning to, roasting and braising, are not matters of taste: they are what you do to a young bird and what you do to an old one.
- Young or oldÀ l’Anglaise the partridge is stuffed and roasted; nearly everywhere else it is larded, braised or stewed. The difference is the age of the bird. A game dealer will still tell you which you have and a chilled cabinet will not, and an old partridge roasted is wasted.
- ShotAny wild bird that was shot may still carry lead pellets, and a braised bird hides them in the sauce rather than announcing them. Feel the flesh through before stuffing it, and warn whoever is eating it.
- French plumsThe Mecklenbourg stuffing is made with chopped French plums, which are prunes: dried, stoned and sweet enough to want the sharpness of the wine and currant jelly that go with them in the same entry.
- FinancièreA fixed compound garnish built on cockscombs, truffles and mushrooms in a madeira-flavoured sauce, used twice on this page as shorthand. It cannot be assembled now and no single modern ingredient stands in for it. What it signalled was expense.
- BoningÀ la Cussy takes the partridge apart from the inside, leaving only the leg bones, and stuffs it with a forcemeat of sweetbread, truffle, mushroom and cockscomb. It is the hardest thing described on the page and the book gives it one line, which is a fair measure of what was assumed of the kitchen.
- A cross-reference, not a recipeThe grouse entry tells you they are dressed like pheasants à la Piémontaise and stops there. Pages in this book are not self-contained; the instruction is somewhere else, under another bird.
The names on this page follow the birds home. À l’Écossaise, à la Kinnaird, grouse and blackcock: this is the produce of northern shooting country turning up on a dinner card in a town, and the page even tells you how it travelled. A game pie made with beef steak, or baked in a raised French mould, is a keeping and carrying dish, crust and jelly packed round the meat so it survives a journey and can be cut cold days later. The rest of the entries pull hard in the other direction, towards the restaurant: foie gras, truffles, Financière sauce, ornamental larding with truffle cut into strips and threaded through the breast for the look of it. One bird, two worlds, and the hostess chose which card she was writing.