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Partridges, Hashed, or Salmi de Perdreaux
INGREDIENTS for dish for 6 persons.- young partridges, 3 shalots, a slice of lean ham, 1 carrot, 3 or 4 mushrooms, a bunch of savoury herbs, 2 cloves, stamped out in rounds with a cutter, 16 whole peppers, pint of stock, 1 glass of small lump of sugar, 2 oz. AVERAGE COST, 5s.
Keep Cut the partridges into pieces, and braise them in the butter and ham until quite tender; then take out the legs, wings and breast, and set them by. K the backs and other trimmings in the braise, and add the onions and celery; any remains of cold game can be put in, and 3 pints of stock. Simmer slowly for 1 hour, strain it, and skim the fat off as clean as possible; put in the pieces that were taken out, give it one boil, and skim again to have it quite clear, and add the sugar and seasoning. Now simmer the sherry or Madeira, a small lump of sugar.
AVERAGE COST, 6s.
After the partridges are plucked and drawn, roast them rather underdone, and cover them with paper, as they should not be browned; cut them into joints, take off the skin from the wings, legs and breasts; put these into a stewpan, cover them up, and set by until the gravy is ready. Cut a slice of ham into small pieces, and put them, with the carrots sliced, the shalots, mushrooms, herbs, cloves and pepper, into a stewpan; fry them lightly in a little butter, pour in the stock, add the bones and trimming from the partridges, and simmer for 1/4 hour.
PARTRIDGES, STEWED.
Strain the gravy, let it cool, and skim off every particle of fat; put it to the legs, wings and breasts, add a glass of sherry or Madeira and a small lump of sugar, let all gradually warm through by the side of the fire, and, when on the point of boiling, serve, and garnish the dish with croûtons.
The remains of roast partridge answer very well dressed in this way, although not so good as when the birds are in the first instance only half-roasted. This recipe is equally suitable for pheasants, moorgame, &c.; but care must be taken always to skin the joints.
TIME.-Altogether, 1 hour.
SEASONABLE from the first of September to the beginning of February.
Two Beeton entries have collided on this page, and the ingredient list carries traces of both a hashed-partridge salmi and a stewed one. The method from "After the partridges are plucked and drawn" onward is the salmi proper, and it is coherent on its own.
- The hinge: never let the sauce boilOnce the joints are back in the strained gravy, everything is already cooked. Warm it only to the point of boiling and serve; a true simmer toughens the breast meat and turns it grey.
- Underroast on purposeBeeton gives no temperature or time, only that the birds be roasted 'rather underdone' and covered with paper 'as they should not be browned'; she later calls this being 'half-roasted'. In a modern oven a short blast in a hot oven, breast covered with buttered paper or foil, will do it. They should still be pink at the bone, since they finish in the sauce.
- Skin every jointBeeton repeats this twice for good reason. Game skin left on the wings and legs goes flabby and slippery in a warm sauce and carries a strong tallowy flavour into it.
- Units and vesselsA "glass" of sherry or Madeira is roughly 2-3 fl oz. A "stewpan" is a wide, shallow saucepan with a lid. "Shalots" are shallots; use three, halved.
- Stock quantitiesThe ingredient line for this dish reads 'pint of stock' (the figure is lost in the mangled text; an imperial pint is 20 fl oz, or 2 1/2 US cups); the larger quantities of 'medium stock' appear to belong to the other partridge recipe on the page. That much stock simmered with the bones for the quarter-hour she gives yields about the right amount of sauce for six small joints.
- The bones do the workThe gravy is essentially a quick game stock: ham, carrot, shallot, mushroom, herbs, cloves and peppercorns fried in butter, then the carcasses and trimmings simmered 15 minutes. Chill it briefly so the fat sets and lifts off cleanly, which is what keeps the finished salmi bright.
- Sourcing the birdsGrey and red-legged partridge are seasonal and rarely on supermarket shelves; order from a game dealer, or substitute two guinea fowl breasts and legs, or quail allowing two per person. Pheasant and red grouse (Beeton's "moorgame") work as she says.
- Yield and garnishSix servings as written, on the assumption of small birds carved into wing, leg and breast joints. Beeton specifies only 'croutons'; fried bread, commonly cut in triangles, set round the rim to soak up the sauce.
A salmi (from the French salmis) is a made dish of game that has been part-roasted, jointed, and finished in a sauce built from its own bones and trimmings, usually lifted with a fortified wine. It belonged to the restaurant and club repertoire of nineteenth-century France and England, and its usefulness to a Victorian household was plain: it gave a respectable second life to yesterday's roast game, as Beeton concedes at the end. The insistence on Madeira or sherry and a single lump of sugar is characteristic of the period's game cookery, where a touch of sweetness was thought to balance the ferrous edge of hung birds. The season she gives, September to early February, follows the British shooting calendar, partridge being legal quarry from 1 September until 1 February.