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Salmis De Perdreaux a LA Dourguignonne

A French dish of partridges salmis served with a sauce of red Burgundy wine, garlic, shallots, mace, morels, and truffles.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Garlic and shallot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,000 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Salmis De Perdreaux a LA Dourguignonne

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no cooking times; the times in the steps were added in transcription, so check for doneness rather than trusting the clock.

Prepare the sauce

  1. Prepare the partridges for salmis.

  2. Replace Chablis or Madeira wine with ½ bottle of excellent red Burgundy.

  3. Add crushed garlic, minced shallots, and a pinch of mace to the wine.

  4. Strain this mixture to create the sauce.

Cook and finish

  1. Sauté the cleaned and blanched morels in butter with a little coarse sea salt.

  2. Add the same wine used for the sauce and cook for 15 minutes until reduced by more than half.

  3. When reduced, add the minced truffles.

  4. Serve the salmis garnished with croutons, morels, and truffles.

  5. Finish with a large knob of fine butter just before serving.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

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

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Garlic + shallottop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,000 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Clove + shallottop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,677 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Clove + macetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  4. Clove + garlictop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,368 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

  5. Butter + truffletop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,209 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Partridges
Provide the meat that is braised in the wine sauce.
Red burgundy wine
Forms the base of the sauce, adding acidity and flavour as it reduces.
Morels
Add earthy flavour and a meaty texture to the finished dish.
Truffles
Add a concentrated, aromatic flavour to the sauce and garnish.
Butter
Adds richness and a glossy texture when stirred into the sauce at the end.

The step that matters

Reducing the wine sauce. Cooking the wine for 15 minutes until more than half has evaporated concentrates its flavour and thickens the sauce. Stopping early leaves it thin and sharp, while overcooking can make it too strong.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (wine, clove, garlic, shallot, butter, truffle):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Capersfits better
  3. Tarragonfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against wine, clove, garlic, shallot, butter, truffle. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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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