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Partridge or Grouse Soup
244. Take a knuckle of veal, a piece of lean ham, three good-sized carrots, three large onions, two blades of mace, some white peppercorns, and five quarts of water, and make a good stock; then add four partridges or three grouse, stew till they are quite tender, take the best parts off, beat them fine, and rub them through a sieve with a little of the stock; stew the bones, &c., in the stock, strain, and add
A two-stage game soup: a long veal-and-ham stock, then the birds themselves cooked in it and their breast meat pounded back in as a thickener. It is closer to a purée-style potage than to a clear consommé.
- The hinge: don't overcook the birdsPartridge and grouse breast turns dry and woolly if it boils long. Simmer the whole birds in the stock only until the legs are tender -- perhaps 40 minutes for a young partridge, longer for an old bird -- then lift them out at once, strip the meat, and return the carcasses to the pot to go on cooking.
- Quantities and yieldFive quarts is 20 cups of water, reducing to perhaps 3 quarts of finished soup — enough for 10 to 12 as a first course. Halve everything for a domestic pot; two partridges and a 2 lb veal knuckle in 2 1/2 quarts of water works on the same principle.
- Knuckle of vealThe lower part of the veal leg, sawn across, valued for gelatine rather than flavour. Ask a butcher for veal shank cut into rounds, or substitute a mixture of veal or beef bones and a pig's trotter for the same body.
- Lean hamMeaning a piece of raw or dry-cured ham, not sandwich ham. A chunk of unsmoked gammon, prosciutto end, or a ham hock all serve; add it whole and remove before straining, as it salts the stock steadily.
- Blades of maceMace is the lacy covering of the nutmeg, sold as flat "blades". Two blades is somewhere in the region of a quarter to half a teaspoon of ground mace, but the whole blades are worth seeking out because they can be strained out cleanly.
- Rubbing through a sieveThe nineteenth-century way of thickening with meat. A food processor does the pounding in seconds; press the resulting paste through a fine sieve or a drum sieve with a ladle of hot stock so no sinew or shot fragment gets through.
- Check for shotWild-shot birds routinely carry lead pellets in the breast and shoulder. Feel the meat over before pounding, and sieve the purée rather than trusting the blender.
- FinishingThe recipe breaks off mid-sentence. Soups of this class were often let down with more stock to a coating consistency, seasoned, and given a spoonful of cream, port or Madeira off the heat. Season only at the end, after the ham has had its say.