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Partridge or Wild Duck Salmi

Roasted partridges or wild duck served with a Madeira sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Partridge or Wild Duck Salmi

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the birds

  1. Parroast the partridges until cooked, then let them cool.

  2. Skin and carve the partridges.

Make the sauce

  1. In a small saucepan, combine the partridges, eschalot, lemon peel, dressed ham, trimmings, Madeira, olive oil, pepper, salt, cayenne, and lemon juice.

  2. Heat the mixture until just warmed through.

Serve

  1. Serve the birds on a hot dish, pouring the strained sauce over them.

  2. Accompany with grilled toast.

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. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. Lemon + olivetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,922 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  3. Olive + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,263 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  4. Ham + peppertop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,058 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  5. Ham + olivetop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together284 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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 is cooked, carved and gently warmed in the sauce.
Madeira
Adds a rich, sweet, fortified wine flavour that forms the body of the sauce.
Olive oil
Adds fat and moisture, helping the sauce feel smooth and carry flavour.
Dressed ham
Adds salty, savoury depth to the sauce.
Eschalot
Adds mild onion-like aromatic flavour to the sauce.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich Madeira and olive oil sauce.

The step that matters

Heat the sauce until just warmed through. Gentle heat keeps the partridge tender and stops the olive oil and wine from becoming harsh or separating. Overheating dries the meat and can make the sauce taste sharp or greasy.

“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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