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Roast Partridge Sur Canapes
Singe, cut off the heads and feet, draw and wipe two fine, young fat partridges. Truss them neatly, cover the breasts with a layer of thin lard, nicely tied around. Lay them in a roasting pan; pour in three tablespoons cold water and roast them in the hot oven for thirty minutes, basting the birds occasionally with their own gravy. Remove from the oven, suppress the lard, untruss, dress on a hot dish over two bread canapes. Decorate the dish with a little watercress. Strain the gravy into a saucebowl and serve separately, also serving a little bread sauce separately.
A straightforward roast in the classic French service: barded birds, a slab of bread beneath to catch the juices, gravy and bread sauce apart. Two points do most of the work — what "lard" means here, and how briefly a small game bird wants to be in the oven.
- "Thin lard" is barding fat, not rendered lardThe recipe means a sheet of cured pork fatback or fresh back fat, cut thin and tied over the breast. A butcher will slice fatback for it; thin-sliced unsmoked streaky bacon or caul fat stands in. "Suppress the lard" simply means cut the string and lift the fat off before serving.
- Hot oven425–450°F. At that heat the barding fat renders and browns fast, which is the point of it.
- Thirty minutes is long for a modern birdA farmed chukar or grey partridge of about 1 to 1¼ lb is generally done in 20–25 minutes at 425°F, and the last five should be uncovered so the breast colours. Standard food-safety guidance for poultry, including game birds, is 165°F in the thickest part; cooks who prefer the breast pink pull nearer 155–160°F and rest ten minutes. Go the full half hour and the breast is likely to be dry regardless of the fat cap.
- "Draw" and "singe"Draw means remove the innards; singe means burn off remaining pinfeathers over a flame. Birds bought today come drawn and plucked, so both steps usually fall away. Keep the liver if it comes with the bird — see the canapés.
- The canapésNot a cocktail canapé but a thick slice of crustless bread, about the footprint of the bird, fried in butter or in the roasting fat until crisp. Traditionally spread with the mashed sautéed liver; plain fried bread is entirely correct too. It must be crisp enough to survive sitting under a resting bird.
- Three tablespoons of waterThat is all the liquid the pan gets, and it is there to keep the drippings from scorching, not to make a sauce. After the birds come out, set the pan on the heat, loosen the brown residue with a splash of stock or water, and strain that — otherwise there is barely a spoonful of gravy per person.
- Bread sauceAssumed knowledge in 1906: milk infused with onion and clove, thickened with fresh breadcrumbs, finished with butter and a little cream. Make it while the birds roast and keep it warm over water; it stiffens as it stands and wants a splash of milk before serving.
- YieldTwo birds, two servings. Partridge is small, and the classic allowance is one bird per person.
Filippini's International Cook Book collects the restaurant repertoire he knew from Delmonico's in New York, and this is a textbook plate of it — game roasted hard and fast, barded to protect the breast, set sur canapé so the fried bread takes the juices, dressed with watercress, and served with gravy and bread sauce in separate bowls. The two accompaniments come from different traditions: the strained pan gravy is French, while bread sauce is emphatically English, the standard partner to roast game bird on British tables since at least the eighteenth century, and its presence here marks how thoroughly Anglo-American hotel cooking of 1900 blended the two. The partridge itself is harder to pin down: the word may point to the European grey or red-legged bird, still a market item in that era, but in American usage of the period it was routinely applied to ruffed grouse and bobwhite as well. American cooks today are far more likely to find farmed chukar or bobwhite quail, the wild-shot game trade having been curtailed by a piecemeal accumulation of state and federal restrictions.