Why it works: Pheasant and butter work together. They rank in the top 20% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 511 recipes. Both carry decanal, which smells soap, orange peel. The science ↓
Partridge Curry
Ingredients
Directions
Melt the butter in a 2-quart stewpan.
Add the cut-up game, curry powder, cold water, and salt.
Stir gently and stew over a slow fire for about 20 minutes until done.
Serve hot in a deep dish with a cover.
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.
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Pheasant + buttertop 20% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together511 recipes
Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Partridges
- Provides the main meat, which becomes tender as it stews slowly in the sauce.
- Butter
- Adds fat and richness, and helps carry the curry spices' flavour through the dish.
- Curry powder
- Supplies the dominant spice aroma and flavour that defines the dish.
- Cold water
- Supplies liquid so the curry powder and game simmer gently without scorching.
The step that matters
Stewing over a slow fire. Boiling game hard toughens its muscle fibres and can scorch the spices on the pan base. A gentle stew lets connective tissue break down slowly, leaving the meat tender and the sauce smooth.
“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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