Civil War Cooking Tutorial:

Roast Partridge and Bread Sauce


Original Recipe:

Roast Partridges: Lard them well with fat pork; tie the legs down to the rump, leaving the feet on; while cooking, baste them well with butter. They require twenty-five or thirty minutes to cook. To make the gravy, put the drippings into a saucepan with a piece of butter about the size of an egg, and a little flour and hot water. Let it boil up once.

Bread Sauce: Cut up an onion, and boil it in milk until it is quite soft; then strain the milk into a cup of stale bread-crums, and let it stand one hour. Then put it into a saucepan, with about two ounces of butter, a little pepper, salt, mace, and the boiled onion. Boil it all up together, and serve it in a sauce-tureen.

Source:

Mrs. E. Putnam: Mrs. Putnam's Receipt Book, and Young Housekeeper's Assistant, Phinney, Blakeman & Mason, New York, 1860

Modern-Day Adaptation:

Don't let the fact that you can't find a partridge stop you from trying this delicious meal. We used two Cornish hens instead.

Results:

This dish was tested by three people, and all agreed it was top-notch. What was remarkable about the finished product is that while neither part of the recipe - hen or bread sauce - would be thrilling by themselves, the taste when eaten together is fantastic. The onion in the sauce is the perfect foil for the delicate taste of the hens. This could easily be made for a large affair using more hens and doubling the bread sauce ingredients. The stated recipe gave us the result pictured. We rated this dish 8 1/2 out of 10.