Receipt for Cooking a Partridge
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare
Run a hunting knife around the partridge's throat, ankles, and down its breast.
Hold a leg in each hand and pop the partridge out of its skin.
Spread the partridge open on a forked twig, with the other end in the ground.
Wrap the bacon around the partridge's neck and under its wings.
Cook
Incline the partridge to the fire, turning it as it cooks.
Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.
Explore the science
What each ingredient does
- Partridge
- Is the main protein, cooked whole over the fire to become tender and browned.
- Bacon
- Wrapped around the bird, it bastes the meat with rendered fat and adds savoury flavour as it cooks.
The step that matters
Turning the partridge over the fire. Lean game meat dries out and chars unevenly if held too close to the flames. Turning it steadily and keeping it inclined away from direct heat lets the meat cook through gently while the bacon fat keeps it moist.
“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.
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