No. 2104

Partridge with Sauerkraut

Perdreau a la Choucroute

Cut a roast partridge into small pieces and lay them aside. With the game bones and parings some aromatic herbs and white wine, prepare a small quantity of concentrated fumet (No. 397); thicken it with very little half-glaze sauce (No. 413) and keep it in a bain-marie. Cook some good sauerkraut with a small piece of bacon, proceeding as for garnished sauerkraut (No. 2819), adding a piece of butter divided into small pats, dish it up and form a hollow in the center; into this dress the pieces of game, pour over the sauce, cover with the sauerkraut and surround this with the bacon cut in slices.

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For the Modern Kitchen

Ranhofer writes for a brigade with a stockpot already going, so the recipe is really an assembly job with two cross-references doing the heavy lifting. Read it as: braise sauerkraut, carve a roast bird into it, bind it with a strong game reduction.

The hinge: roast first, sauce secondThe partridge is roasted whole and only then cut up, so the meat stays juicy; the carcass and trimmings become the sauce. If you jump straight to braising the bird in the kraut you lose both the roast flavour and the fumet.
Fumet (No. 397)A concentrated game stock. The recipe itself specifies only the game bones and parings, aromatic herbs and white wine, reduced to a small quantity; the cross-referenced formula is not reproduced here, so treat any quantities as a guess. Reducing wine and a little stock down to a few tablespoons gives roughly the right intensity.
Half-glaze (No. 413)Ranhofer's demi-glace, an espagnole reduced with stock. A tablespoon or two of good commercial demi-glace, or simply a further-reduced brown stock, stands in. It is a binder here, not the main flavour.
Bain-marieA water bath used to hold sauces warm without a skin forming or the butter breaking. A heatproof bowl over barely steaming water does the same thing.
"A small piece of bacon"Cooked whole in the kraut and then sliced to garnish, which is what the recipe's 'bacon cut in slices' implies. A piece of slab bacon or salt pork suits this better than modern thin-cut streaky bacon, which will disintegrate; the book gives no weight, so judge the size against the amount of kraut.
Sauerkraut timingBraised sauerkraut of this kind is cooked long and slow at a bare simmer; the recipe gives no time, and the cross-referenced No. 2819 is not shown here, so allow an hour and a half or more and taste as you go. Rinse first if the brine is very sharp. The butter is specified as a piece divided into small pats, added before dishing up.
Finding the birdWild grey partridge is largely unavailable in the United States; farmed chukar or French red-leg partridge is the practical substitute, and quail will do at a pinch. One bird per person for partridge, two for quail.
Roasting the partridgeThe book gives no roasting temperature or time here. A farmed partridge of about 12 oz will take roughly 20-25 minutes in a hot oven; for safety, take the breast to 165F and then rest it. Older wild birds are tough and better braised, which is a different dish.
YieldAs written this serves one or two as a course. Scale the kraut at about 1 lb per two birds.

A Little History

The Epicurean (1894) is Charles Ranhofer's record of his thirty-odd years in the kitchens of Delmonico's in New York, and it is essentially a French professional's book written in English for American use. Perdreau a la choucroute belongs to the Alsatian and southern German side of the French repertoire, where sauerkraut braised with pork and a bird is standard autumn cooking; partridge with cabbage in some form appears in French kitchens well before Ranhofer, and the pairing is usually explained as a way of softening the dryness and strong flavour of a small game bird with fat and acid. What marks this version as restaurant work rather than home cooking is the moulding: the kraut is dished into a ring, the carved game hidden in the centre with its sauce, then covered over and encircled with slices of bacon, so the plate arrives looking like a mound of sauerkraut and reveals the bird only when served. The cross-references to a fumet and a half-glaze assume a kitchen where both already exist in the larder, which is the single biggest gap between Ranhofer's world and a domestic one.