Skip to main content
Main

Partridge Pie

A baked pie of partridges, veal cutlets, ham, parsley, butter, and puff pastry, cooked in soup stock.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Pepper and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Partridge Pie

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the filling

  1. Line a deep baking dish with veal cutlets.

  2. Layer thin slices of ham over the veal and season with pepper and coarse sea salt.

  3. Pluck, draw, wipe, and quarter the partridges.

  4. Rub each part with pepper, coarse sea salt, minced parsley, and butter.

  5. Place the partridge pieces in the baking dish.

  6. Pour 1 pint of strong soup stock over the partridges.

Bake

  1. Line the edges of the dish with light puff pastry and cover with more pastry.

  2. Brush the top with the yolk of an egg.

  3. Bake at 400°F (200°C) for one hour, covering with thick paper if the pastry browns too quickly.

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. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  2. Parsley + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together28,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  3. Veal + hamtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,264 recipes

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

  4. Ham + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,475 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

  5. Ham + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,526 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

Veal cutlets
Forms the base layer that cooks gently and flavours the pie beneath the birds.
Partridges
Provide the main meat, which becomes tender as it braises in the stock.
Butter
Adds fat that carries seasoning over the birds and enriches their flavour.
Light puff pastry
Forms a flaky, crisp crust that seals in the filling as it bakes.
Strong soup stock
Supplies moisture and savoury depth that turns into a rich sauce during baking.
Egg yolk
Brushed on top, it promotes a glossy golden browning of the pastry.

The step that matters

Covering the pastry when it browns too quickly. Puff pastry browns faster than the filling cooks through. Covering it with thick paper slows surface browning so the partridge and veal can cook evenly without the crust burning.

“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.

You might also like

Veal PattiesVeal Patties50 recipesBeef, Mutton, or Veal BrothBeef, Mutton, or Veal Broth6 recipesTomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipes