NATURAL HISTORY 57 



containing one quartered carrot, one 

 onion stuck with a garlic clove, one 

 faggot, two-thirds pint of consomme, and 

 three tablespoonfuls of stock fat per 2 

 Ibs. of cabbage. Cover the old partridges 

 with slices of bacon, lay them in the bed 

 of cabbage and then braise gently for 

 two to three hours. 



There are exactly a thousand-and-one 

 other ways of cooking a partridge, but 

 with such material as good young English 

 birds to work on, any treatment but the 

 plainest can only tend towards spoiling a 

 good thing, reminding one of Browning's 

 lines, written, it is true, on a more 

 romantic theme a pretty woman yet 

 here apposite enough to excuse their being 

 put to baser uses : 



Thus the craftsman seeks to grace the rose, 



Plucks a mould flower 



For his gold flower, 

 Uses fine things that efface the rose. 



In like fashion the many fine things 

 which a modern chef uses to grace the 

 partridge often result only in a triumph 



