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Potted Partridges
Mix together the following spices; one teaspoonful of ground cloves, one-half teaspoonful each of ground mace, allspice and white pepper, one-half tablespoonful of salt, and a small quantity each of nutmeg and cayenne pepper. Prepare the partridges as for roasting, season them both inside and out with the spices, and truss them. Put a thick layer of vine leaves at the bottom of a stewpan, put the birds in breasts downwards, and cover them with clarified butter; cover and cook over a slow fire. When cooked take them out and drain well. Clarify their cooking butter and let it get cold, then take the solid butter that is free from the gravy and melt it again. Put the birds in jars, pour the warmed butter over them, and when it has cooled again tie parchment over the jars. Should it be required to keep them longer than a week pour melted paraffin wax over them.
This is not a dish so much as a preservation method: game birds cooked in fat, sealed under fat, and held for a week or longer at cellar temperature. The cooking is straightforward; the storage is the problem, and it is why the recipe cannot be followed today.
- Why the sealing failsButter poured over cooked meat and sealed with parchment or paraffin creates exactly the low-oxygen, low-acid, low-salt environment in which Clostridium botulinum spores germinate and produce toxin. The spores survive the gentle cooking described here, and the seal then protects them from competing organisms rather than from anything else.
- No temperature, no time, no measure"Cook over a slow fire" until "cooked" gives no internal temperature and no duration, and the recipe specifies no cure salt, no acidification and no storage temperature. There is nothing in it that can be verified, which is the definition of an unsafe preservation procedure.
- The paraffin instructionWax seals were common household practice into the twentieth century and are now generally not recommended for meat, fish or even preserves. Wax shrinks and cracks as it cools, admits air along the jar wall, and can hide spoilage instead of preventing it. Botulinum toxin may be present without any obvious smell or off taste, so such a jar cannot be judged safe by look or smell.
- The spice mix is not a cureCloves, mace, allspice, pepper and half a tablespoon of salt season the birds; they do not preserve them. Potted meats that kept for any length of time generally relied on much heavier salting, longer cooking to drive off moisture, and a cold larder - none of which this recipe supplies.
- Vine leavesThe layer of grape leaves at the bottom of the stewpan keeps the breasts off the bare metal; the recipe does not say why they are there. Any contribution is a faint tannic note rather than anything preservative.
- Partridge itselfFarmed grey and chukar partridge are sold by game dealers and are a legitimate ingredient; wild birds are subject to seasons and bag limits where you live. If you want potted game, use a current recipe with tested times and refrigerated storage, and treat it as a short-keeping cooked dish rather than a preserve.
Potting is one of the oldest English methods of keeping cooked meat: the flesh is cooked in fat, packed tight, and sealed under a cap of the same fat, a technique closely related to French confit and recorded in English household books from the seventeenth century onward. Game birds, salmon, beef and shrimps were all potted, and the sealed jar was as much a means of transport and gift-giving as of storage — potted grouse and partridge travelled from country estates to town houses through the nineteenth century. Oscar Tschirky's book, published at the end of that century when the Waldorf was among the more conspicuous hotel kitchens in New York, gathers a great many such carry-overs from the pre-refrigeration larder alongside its à la carte cookery. By the time the book appeared, mechanical refrigeration was already reaching commercial kitchens, and recipes like this one were on their way to becoming a flavour tradition rather than a practical necessity.