No. 276

Puree of Partridges or Quails a la d'Henin

Puree de Perdreaux ou de Cailles a la d'Henin

Roast some partridges; suppress the skin and bones, and pound the meat with one ounce of butter and two gills of veloute (No. 415) for each partridge; press this through a sieve and put it into a bowl with one raw egg-yolk and a little nutmeg. Put on the fire to boil, two quarts of thickened game stock; add to it the fragments of birds and a garnished bouquet, some minced carrots and onions, salt and nutmeg; boil on one side of the saucepan only in order to despumate for one hour, then remove all the fat, strain, and return it to the saucepan; at the first boil add the prepared puree, season to taste, then pour the soup into a soup tureen, after straining it through a fine colander, adding a garnishing of hulled barley and some small game quenelles.

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For the Modern Kitchen

Ranhofer writes for a brigade with stock, velouté and quenelle forcemeat already on hand. The work is in the components; the soup itself takes about ninety minutes once they exist.

Gills and quantitiesA gill is half a cup, so two gills of velouté per bird is one cup, plus an ounce of butter. The recipe does not say how many birds to use; scale the velouté and butter per bird. Two partridges give a few cups of purée base to go into two quarts of stock, which will itself reduce over the hour of despumating, so expect somewhere around two quarts of finished soup.
Velouté (No. 415)A blond roux slackened with veal or chicken stock and simmered until it coats a spoon. Any well-made light velouté works; do not substitute plain stock, as the purée depends on it for body.
DespumateAn old kitchen word for clarifying by skimming. Setting the pan half off the burner makes the liquid rise on one side only, driving scum and fat to the cool edge where it can be lifted off. Keep it at a bare tremble for the full hour.
The egg yolk is the hingeOnce the yolk is in, the purée must not boil hard or it will grain. Ranhofer's "put on the fire to boil" applies to the game stock, not the purée, and he then adds the purée to the stock at the first boil; better practice is to warm the purée, then temper it into the hot strained stock off the heat and hold the finished soup just below a simmer.
Roasting the birdsThe recipe gives no temperature or time, only "roast." Partridge and quail are lean and dry out fast, so roast hot and stop while the breast is just firm, undercooking slightly since the meat gets a second cooking in the purée.
Sourcing the birdsWild partridge and quail are seasonal and in many places licence-restricted. Farmed quail are sold four to six ounces each; figure three or four quail to replace one partridge.
Hulled barley and quenellesBoth garnishes are cooked separately and added at the end. Hulled (not pearl) barley needs 45 to 60 minutes of simmering in salted water; the quenelles are a fine game forcemeat poached in barely shivering stock for a few minutes until they float.
Straining twiceThe purée through a sieve, the finished soup through a fine colander or chinois. Skipping either leaves shot fragments, sinew and vegetable debris in what is meant to be a smooth purée.

A Little History

This is from Charles Ranhofer's The Epicurean (1894), the enormous record of his cooking at Delmonico's in New York, where the soup chapter alone runs to hundreds of numbered formulas cross-referenced to sauces and stocks elsewhere in the book. Game purées like this one belonged to the grand French service Ranhofer brought to American dining rooms: small wild birds, expensive by weight and yielding almost nothing after skin and bone are discarded, pounded to a paste and stretched with velouté into a soup rich enough to open a long menu. The name à la d'Hénin follows the period habit of dedicating a dish to a patron or noble house — the Hénin-Liétard family held a French princely title — though as with most such attributions in Ranhofer no origin is documented, and the label is best read as a house name for a particular treatment rather than evidence of a specific person's table.