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Roasted Partridges
Clean and truss birds, put on spit or in oven to roast; baste with a little butter and hot water until a gravy is made, then baste with this; use one tea-spoon of butter to each bird. They must not be stuffed, as that destroys flavor. Roast thirty minutes. There is a good deal of confusion regarding the name of these delicious game birds, the quail being called a partridge in many localities. The partridge (ruffed grouse) is a much larger bird than the quail, much shyer, and not often found in large coveys. Both are very delicious and always bring high prices in the markets. - Mrs. Major Mason, Augusta, Ga. *
A plain spit-roast adapted for an oven, with the useful nineteenth-century warning against stuffing small game. The only real technique here is keeping the breast from drying while the legs cook.
- Oven temperatureThe book gives none, as the birds were expected to go before a fire or into a range oven judged by hand. For quail or farmed partridge, a hot oven of 425-450F suits the short 30-minute time; lower than that and the skin will not colour before the breast overcooks.
- Which bird you actually haveThe recipe itself flags the confusion: bobwhite quail (a few ounces) and ruffed grouse (roughly 1 to 1.5 lb whole, less once dressed) are very different animals. Thirty minutes is generous for quail and short for a grouse. Farmed quail are usually 4-5 oz, farmed chukar or grey partridge around 12-14 oz.
- DonenessCook to 165F at the thickest part of the thigh. Wild birds carry the same Salmonella and Campylobacter risk as poultry; the pink breast fashionable with squab is not the safe practice here.
- Basting with butter and hot waterThis makes a shallow pan liquid that keeps the birds from scorching and gives you the gravy at the end. One teaspoon of butter per bird is thin by modern habit; a strip of bacon or barding fat over the breast does the same job with less attention.
- Trussing, and why no stuffingTie the legs and pin the wings so the bird holds its shape. The instruction not to stuff is sound for a reason the author does not give: a stuffed cavity slows heat to the centre, so the breast is ruined by the time the middle is safe.
- SourcingSale of wild-taken game is generally barred in American markets under state and federal law, with limited exceptions for imported or inspected birds, so the "high prices" mentioned belong to a largely vanished trade. Buy farmed quail or partridge, or take wild birds under your state's season and bag limits.
- YieldOne quail per person as a first course, two as a main. A single ruffed grouse or a large partridge serves two.
- Finishing the gravyDeglaze the pan with a little stock or the remaining basting liquid and reduce; there is almost no fat in these birds, so the gravy will be lean and needs salt and perhaps a knob of butter off the heat.
The naming muddle Mrs. Mason describes is genuinely American and still with us: in the South, partridge has long meant the bobwhite quail, while northern and western usage reserves it for the ruffed grouse, and "Hungarian partridge" and chukar were later introductions from Europe and Asia. Her remark that both birds "bring high prices in the markets" reflects a period when wild game was still openly sold commercially. Market hunting was progressively outlawed in the early twentieth century, which is why a book like The Dixie Cook Book can treat wild birds as a routine purchase in a way no modern cookbook can. The contributor's byline gives her husband's military rank in place of her own name, a common convention in cookbooks of the period that printed recipes under named contributors.