Skip to main content
Main

Partridge Soup

A hearty soup made from partridges, ham, celery, onions, mutton shanks, and butter, simmered in water and served with fried bread.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Skin the partridges and cut them into pieces.

  2. Slice the ham, celery, and onions.

Make the soup

  1. Fry all ingredients in butter until browned, being careful not to burn them.

  2. Transfer to a stew pan, add boiling water, peppercorns, mutton shanks, and salt.

  3. Stew gently for 2 hours, then strain through a sieve.

Serve

  1. Return the strained soup to the stew pan with stewed celery and fried bread.

  2. Heat until near boiling, skim off any fat, then pour into a tureen and serve hot.

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. Celery + oniontop 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 meaty flavour that gives the soup its character.
Mutton shanks
Release collagen and savoury flavour into the broth during the long gentle stew.
Onions
Brown in butter to build sweetness and depth in the finished soup.
Ham
Adds salty, savoury depth to the broth.
Butter
Carries the browning of the onions and partridge, adding richness and roasted flavour.

The step that matters

Fry without burning. Browning the partridge, ham and onions in butter builds the savoury base of the broth. Scorched pieces turn bitter and taint the whole soup, so they need steady heat and attention.

Swap the celery

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (ham, onion, butter, mutton, 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, 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.

You might also like

Brown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipesCream of Celery SoupCream of Celery Soup113 recipesWhite BreadWhite Bread80 recipes