Skip to main content
Main

Partridges En Crepine

Partridges are stewed, stuffed with forcemeat, coated in egg whites, and baked with puff pastry, served with a reduced sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Basil and thyme match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,768 recipes. Both carry terpineol, which smells pine, woody. The science ↓

Partridges En Crepine

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

  1. Boil and stew the partridges until half cooked with veal broth, white wine, onion, basil, thyme, garlic, pepper, salt, lemon juice, cloves, and bay leaf.

  2. Remove the partridges from the liquid and strain it to make a good sauce.

Stuff and bake

  1. Once cool, stuff each partridge with light forcemeat.

  2. Brush the stuffed partridges with beaten egg whites and garnish with puff pastry.

  3. Bake at 400°F (200°C) until golden brown.

Serve

  1. Serve with the reduced sauce underneath.

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. Basil + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,768 recipes

    Shared aroma: terpineol (pine, woody).

  2. Onion + garlictop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together29,058 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  3. Thyme + clovetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,108 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  4. Basil + garlictop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,805 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

  5. Thyme + peppertop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Partridges
Form the main body of the dish, cooked gently in liquid until half done.
Egg whites
Brushed on the surface to help the pastry garnish brown and set during baking.
Light forcemeat
Fills the birds, adding a tender, moist filling as they cook.
Veal broth
Moistens the birds during stewing and forms the base of the sauce.
White wine
Adds acidity to the stewing liquid, helping flavour the birds and sauce.

The step that matters

Stew the partridges only until half cooked. Partridge is lean and dries out quickly. Stopping at half cooking leaves the birds moist for the final bake, which finishes the cooking in the oven.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (veal, white wine, basil, thyme, clove, garlic, pepper):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Tomatofits better
  3. Carrotfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, white wine, basil, thyme, clove, garlic, pepper. 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.

More stuffed partridges recipes

with Mushrooms 5Mushroom 3 See all 17 →

You might also like

Lemon SauceLemon Sauce236 recipesVeal PattiesVeal Patties50 recipesBeef, Mutton, or Veal BrothBeef, Mutton, or Veal Broth6 recipesTomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipes