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Partridge, Grouse, Native Pheasants
AND PRAIRIE CHICKENS All these related birds have dry flesh. Brush well with butter or bacon grease after splitting down the back, pin a generous slice of bacon or salt pork over the breast, and grill. Season while grilling. If you have no grill, leave them whole and hang them in front of the fire from a pole laid across two cleft sticks, or impale them on sticks and toast them, turning them before the fire until done. Don't neglect to pick the backs while eating them, for these tiny morsels of meat are the sweetest eating in the world.
If birds are old, cut them up and make stew of them, that is, fry them with a little onion in butter, cover with boiling water, add seasonings and several sticks of celery and simmer until tender. Or jug them (see recipe for Jugged Partridge under Out of the Bean Hole).
A few years ago when America was teeming with game, no one bothered with anything but the breasts of these birds-just ripped them off, filled a big dripping pan with them, spread a half pound of butter over them, tossed on some salt and pepper, and stuck them into the oven.
When done, the pan gravy was thinned with milk, and thickened with flour.
A camp method for lean upland birds, written when a hunter might come back with a dozen. The whole thing turns on fat: these birds carry almost none, and every step here is about adding some before the heat drives out what little moisture they have.
- Split down the backThis is spatchcocking. Cut out the backbone with shears, press the bird flat, and it will grill in roughly half the time and cook evenly. Save the backs for stock if you are not eating them off the bone as the author suggests.
- Barding is not optionalThe bacon or salt pork over the breast is doing the work of the fat the bird does not have. Fasten it with a toothpick rather than a metal pin, and if the pork is very salty, season lightly and taste before adding more.
- DonenessWhole partridge, grouse and pheasant are done at 165F in the thickest part of the thigh; the breast will read a little higher. Some cooks pull grouse and partridge breast lower, around 135-140F, for a rosy centre, but that is below a safe temperature for wild game and is a risk taken knowingly. These birds dry out very quickly once past done.
- Cooking in front of the fireHanging a bird from a pole or on a stick is reflector roasting, and it needs a bed of coals with a tall back log or a sheet of foil behind it to bounce heat forward. Set a pan underneath to catch drips and baste with them; expect 40 minutes to an hour for a whole bird, judged by thermometer, not clock.
- The oven-pan of breastsNo temperature is given. A hot oven, 425F, for eight to twelve minutes suits skinned breasts under that much butter; a moderate 350F will dry them before they colour. Half a pound of butter would suit a large pan holding a dozen or more breasts, though the recipe specifies only 'a big dripping pan'.
- The milk gravyThinning pan drippings with milk and thickening with flour is a plain white pan gravy: roughly two tablespoons flour and a cup of milk per two tablespoons of fat, whisked in off the heat, then simmered two minutes to cook out the raw flour.
- Old birdsThe stew is sound advice. An old wild bird has working leg muscle that no amount of grilling will soften; 90 minutes to two hours at a bare simmer is usual, and the meat should be pulled from the bone before serving.
- Shot and legalityWild-shot birds carry lead pellets and sometimes fragments; check the flesh before it reaches the table. Prairie chickens in particular are now closed to hunting across most of their former range, and the greater prairie chicken is a species of serious conservation concern. Farmed pheasant, partridge or quail substitute directly and are fattier, so shorten the times.
- YieldFigure one partridge or grouse per person, one pheasant for two.
The offhand line about America teeming with game dates this passage as much as any calendar. Through the second half of the nineteenth century, market hunters shipped wild birds to city restaurants by the barrel, and breasting a grouse and discarding the rest was the economy of abundance rather than deliberate waste. That abundance collapsed: the heath hen, an eastern relative of the prairie chicken, was extinct by 1932, and the Lacey Act of 1900, followed for migratory species by the Migratory Bird Treaty Act of 1918, curtailed commercial traffic in wild game in the United States -- though upland birds such as grouse, partridge and prairie chickens were regulated chiefly by the individual states rather than under the treaty. "Native pheasants" here appears to be regional American usage, applied in parts of the eastern and Appalachian states to the ruffed grouse rather than to the introduced ring-necked pheasant. The barding and the reflector-fire roasting are much older than the book, and the instruction to pick the backs suggests a writer who ate these birds in camp rather than in a dining room.