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Braised Partridges with Truffles
Prepare and truss three partridges as for boiling, put them in a stewpan with some mirepoix and cook them; when done drain and arrange them on a hot dish to form a hollow triangle. Put round some sliced truffles that have been mixed with supreme sauce, fill a sauceboat with supreme sauce, and serve. Broiled Partridges, American Style Singe, draw and wipe neatly three tender partridges; cut them in halves, lay them on a dish and season with a little salt, pepper and one tablespoonful of oil. Roll them in well and put them to broil for seven minutes on each side. Prepare six slices of fried hominy, arrange them on a hot dish, place the partridges over and pour one gill of maitre d'hotel butter on top; place six slices of broiled bacon over the birds, and serve.
Broiled Partridge Cutlets with Colbert Sauce Chop three tender partridges each in halves lengthwise, sprinkle salt and pepper over them, dip them in warmed butter, then in breadcrumbs, put them on a gridiron and broil over a clear slow fire, turn them when done on one side and finish the other. When cooked put the partridges on a hot dish, pour over some Colbert sauce, and serve.
Three consecutive partridge preparations from the Waldorf's game repertoire, written for cooks who already knew what a mirepoix bed and a suprême sauce were. The gaps are all in the supporting elements rather than the birds.
- Mirepoix means the braising bed, not a garnishIn Oscar's kitchen a mirepoix for braising is diced carrot, onion, celery and often salt pork or bacon trimmings, moistened with stock and a little wine. The birds cook covered on top of it over low heat, roughly 25-35 minutes for whole partridges, and the strained liquid becomes the base for the sauce.
- Suprême sauceA chicken velouté (blond roux plus white poultry stock) finished with cream and butter, and here best made with the braising liquid worked in. It is not a modern "supreme sauce" of mayonnaise or sour cream.
- Colbert sauceIn the classical repertoire this is usually maitre d'hotel butter with melted meat glaze and chopped tarragon whisked in, though brown-sauce versions built on demi-glace or strong game stock with meat glaze, lemon juice and butter are also recorded. Either way it must not boil once the butter goes in or it separates.
- Maitre d'hotel butter and the gillA gill is half a cup, which is a generous amount of butter creamed with lemon juice, parsley, salt and pepper for six half-birds. Half that quantity suits most modern palates; add it at the table so it melts over the hot meat rather than pooling on the platter.
- Fried hominyCooked hominy grits spread in a pan, chilled firm, cut into slices and fried in butter or bacon fat until crusted. Coarse stone-ground grits, cooked stiff, give the closest result; canned whole hominy will not hold a slice.
- Sourcing the birdsFarmed partridge runs about 12-14 oz dressed. Two bone-in quail or one poussin per person substitute reasonably for the broiled preparations; a Cornish hen split in half is closer in size to a partridge but needs a few minutes longer. Wild shot birds should be checked for pellets before breading.
- Broiling times and donenessSeven minutes a side over live coals is about right for a split partridge, but under a domestic broiler set the rack 5-6 inches from the element and work to temperature rather than the clock: 165F at the thickest part of the thigh. Breast meat this lean dries out fast past that point.
- "A clear slow fire" for the breaded cutletsBreadcrumbs and butter over high heat scorch before the meat is through. Bank the coals or use moderate broiler heat and expect 8-10 minutes a side.
- YieldEach of the three preparations uses three birds and serves six as a course, less if the partridges are small.
Oscar Tschirky's book records the Waldorf's kitchen at a moment when American hotel cooking was almost entirely French in vocabulary and game birds were still plentiful on the market. Partridge in New York dining rooms of the period often meant ruffed grouse or bobwhite quail as much as the European grey partridge, since market gunners and game dealers sold under loose names; the truffled version with suprême sauce is straight Escoffier-era practice, while the second recipe is labelled "American Style" precisely because of the fried hominy and bacon, an accompaniment unlikely to be found under a game bird in a Parisian kitchen. The Colbert garnish is generally traced to the mid-nineteenth-century French repertoire and named for the finance minister of Louis XIV, one of a large family of sauces and garnishes christened after court figures long after their deaths. Wholesale market hunting of wild game for restaurants was curtailed in the United States by the Lacey Act of 1900 and later legislation, which is why menus of this kind read as extravagant now: the birds today come from game farms rather than the game stall.