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Partridge Pie
Singe, draw and clean three partridges, put them in a fryingpan with a little butter, season them well and fry lightly. Line the inside of a pie-dish with some veal cutlets, and over that put a slice of bacon, a little chopped parsley and two chopped mushrooms. Cut the partridges in halves, put them in and place two more chopped mushrooms and a little chopped parsley over; cut some hard-boiled eggs in halves, put them on the top and pour in one-half pint of gravy. Put a strip of puff paste round the edge of the dish, place a cover of the paste on the top and press them together; dip a pastebrush in beaten egg, brush the top of the pie over with it and make a small hole in the center. Put it in a hot oven with a piece of paper on top to prevent its browning too much, and bake it for an hour. Serve either hot or cold. Partridges, Princess Beatrice Style Prepare three partridges, truss them for roasting, and lard their breasts with thin strips of fat smoked bacon. The larding can be done in a fancy design. Lay the birds in a basin with some verjuice and leave them for an hour or two. When ready, drain and wipe them very carefully on a dry cloth without disturbing the pattern of the larding. Butter some sheets of broiling-paper, wrap each bird separately in it and roast them in the oven, keeping them well basted. In about half an hour remove the paper and brown the birds. Lay them on a hot dish garnished with watercress, and serve with a clear sauce.
Two recipes have run together here: a raised-style game pie and a roast. Both assume whole partridges and a cook who can bone, lard and make puff paste. Neither is difficult, but the ingredient list is written in shorthand.
- The hinge: gravy that setsThe pie is meant to be served hot or cold, and the cold version only works if the half pint of gravy is a properly gelatinous brown stock made from veal or game bones. A thin canned stock will leave a puddle in the bottom of the dish rather than a jelly around the birds.
- "A hot oven"Conventionally read as somewhere in the 400-450F range. The sheet of paper laid on top is a shield, not a lid: it keeps the puff paste from scorching over the full hour. Dropping the heat to about 350F once the pastry has set and coloured will keep the crust from finishing long before the birds.
- PartridgeGrey and red-legged partridge dress out at roughly 12-16 oz each; three feed six as a pie. Farmed birds are sold at good butchers and by mail order. Poussin or Cornish game hens of similar weight substitute directly, though they lack the flavour that justifies the trouble. Wild-shot birds should be checked for shot before they go in the crust.
- The veal cutletsThese are thin escalopes pounded out to line the dish, the old way of giving a game pie a savoury lining and extra body. Veal escalope or thinly sliced pork loin both work; the slices should overlap and come up the sides.
- Half a pintAn American pint in this book, so one cup of gravy. Pour it in cold or barely warm so it does not soften the pastry rim before the lid goes on.
- The steam holeNot optional. Without it the trapped steam lifts the lid off the filling and leaves a hollow, soggy dome. If serving cold, a small funnel of extra gravy can be poured through the hole once the pie has cooled.
- VerjuiceThe pressed juice of unripe grapes, sharp but not as aggressive as vinegar. It has come back into production and is sold by specialist grocers; a mix of white wine and a little lemon juice is the usual stand-in for the marinade in the second recipe.
- Broiling-paperButtered parchment. Wrapping keeps the larded fat from melting off and the pattern intact; the last few minutes uncovered do the browning. Small game birds are usually taken to about 165F at the thigh.
- LardingThreading strips of fatback or fat bacon through the breast with a larding needle. Barding, which is simply tying a sheet of fat over the breast, does the same job with less ceremony and no fancy design.
Game pie of this kind was standing food in nineteenth-century hotel and club kitchens, valued as much for keeping as for eating: sealed under pastry with a jellied stock, it travelled to shooting lunches and sat on cold buffets, and Oscar Tschirky specifies that it may be served hot or cold. The second recipe carries the name of Princess Beatrice, Queen Victoria's youngest daughter; grand hotel menus of the 1890s routinely attached royal and aristocratic names to garnishes and preparations, and such attributions generally say more about the flattering conventions of the period's menu French than about any documented connection to the person named. Both dishes belong to the era before market-hunting bans and state game laws narrowed what an American kitchen could legally buy, when a Waldorf larder in season would have held partridge, grouse, quail and woodcock as a matter of course.