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Partridges with Dixie Sauce

Partridges cooked in a butter, vinegar, pepper, and milk sauce thickened with flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Partridges with Dixie Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Melt the butter in a covered saucepan over low heat.

  2. Add the vinegar and red pepper to the melted butter.

  3. Place the partridges in the saucepan and cook gently until tender.

  4. Remove the birds and keep them warm in a covered dish.

  5. Add the milk to the sauce and cook for about 10 minutes.

  6. Thicken the sauce with flour and add salt to taste.

  7. Return the partridges to the sauce and let them simmer for 10 minutes 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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Vinegar + peppertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,814 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  4. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Pepper + flourtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Partridges
Provide the main meat, which cooks gently until tender in the butter and sauce.
Butter
Provides fat and richness, and carries the flavour of the sauce.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens the flavour of the rich butter and milk sauce.
Red peppers
Add pepper flavour and aroma to the butter base of the sauce.
Rich milk
Gives the sauce body, creaminess and a mild sweetness when simmered.
Flour
Thickens the sauce so it clings to the partridges.

The step that matters

Thicken the sauce with flour before returning the partridges. Flour must be cooked into the hot liquid to thicken it smoothly; added unevenly or undercooked it can leave lumps or a raw starchy taste, and the sauce only thickens properly once it has simmered.

“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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