Name: Perdreaux En Croustade
Ingredients: 8 partridges; bacon slices; mirepoix (carrots, onions, celery); 8 large crayfish; 14 large truffles; 8 combs (chicken crests); bread for croustade; oil for frying

Why it works: Carrot and celery match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,173 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Perdreaux En Croustade

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare 8 partridges and truss them as for roasting. Cover with bacon slices and cook them.
Moisten with mirepoix and place in a covered pot over heat.
Prepare 8 large crayfish, 14 large truffles, and 8 combs.
Make a financial stew with the ingredients and reduce it with partridge stock.
Create an oval-shaped croustade using bread.
Once the partridges are cooked, drain them and place them in the croustade with the tails facing up.
Place a fried bread cone in the center of the croustade.
Put a crayfish between each partridge.
Make 8 small stacks of combs and truffles to cover the partridge tails.
Place 6 truffles in a mound in the center of the stacks.
Serve the financial stew separately in a vegetable dish.

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.

Carrot + celerytop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together10,173 recipes

Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).
Carrot + oniontop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together21,601 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Onion + celerytop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together18,518 recipes

Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).
Onion + chickentop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together17,814 recipes

Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, sweet).
Truffle + chickentop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together756 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

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

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (carrot, celery, crayfish, truffle, chicken, bread):

Tomatofits better
Asparagusfits better
Potatofits better
Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against carrot, celery, crayfish, truffle, chicken, bread. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.