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To Make Partridge Soup

A soup made from partridges, ham, onions, celery, and fried bread, simmered in water with peppercorns.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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 ↓

To Make Partridge Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Remove the skins from the partridges and cut them into small pieces.

Make the soup

  1. In a pan, fry the partridge pieces, ham, onions, and celery in butter until browned.

  2. Add the mixture to 3 quarts of water with peppercorns and boil until reduced to just over 1 pint.

  3. Strain the soup and add chopped 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. Onion + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Onion + breadtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,676 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

Old partridges
Provide the main meat and rich flavour for the broth.
Ham
Adds savoury, salty depth to the broth as it fries.
Onions
Caramelise in butter to add sweetness and savoury base flavour.
Butter
Carries browning in the frying step, adding roasted, nutty aroma.

The step that matters

Browning the partridge, ham, onions and celery. Frying until well browned develops deep roasted flavours through the Maillard reaction. Pale frying gives a flatter, less savoury broth once simmered.

Swap the celery

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

  1. Garlicfits better
  2. Capersfits about as well
  3. Parsleyfits about as well
  4. Celerythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against ham, onion, butter, 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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