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Soup

Partridge Sourp

A soup made with partridges, ham, onion, celery, butter, water, peppers, mutton shank, and fried bread.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Partridge Sourp

Ingredients

Directions

Make the soup

  1. Brown the ham slices and partridges with the onion, celery, and butter without burning.

  2. Transfer to a stewpan, add water, whole white peppers, and the shank of mutton.

  3. Season with coarse sea salt, skim the surface, and bring to a boil.

Finish and serve

  1. Strain the soup, then add stewed celery and fried bread 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 + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Onion + celerytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,518 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Ham + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,536 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

  4. Mutton + breadtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,488 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  5. Ham + muttontop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together430 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

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 and rich flavour that the broth carries.
Butter
Carries flavour during browning and adds richness to the soup.
Ham
Adds savoury, salty depth to the broth.
Mutton shank
Contributes body and meaty flavour to the water-based stock.

The step that matters

Browning without burning. Browning the ham, partridge, and vegetables builds deep savoury flavour through the Maillard reaction. If the butter or solids scorch, the soup takes on bitter, acrid notes that cannot be removed later.

Swap the white pepper

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (ham, onion, celery, butter, mutton, bread):

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Garlicfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against ham, onion, celery, butter, mutton, bread. 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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