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Partridges, Roast

Roasted partridges served on fried bread crumbs or buttered toast with gravy, garnished with watercress.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 ↓

Partridges, Roast

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the birds

  1. Hang the partridges in a cool place for at least two weeks.

  2. Pluck, singe, and draw the birds, wiping them inside and out.

  3. Cut off the heads, leaving enough skin on the neck to skewer securely.

  4. If heads are left on, turn them under the wing with the bill on the breast.

  5. Draw the legs close to the breast and truss the birds with string.

  6. To plump the birds, pass a needle through the back and tie the strings firmly.

Roast and serve

  1. Roast the partridges before a clear fire, basting liberally with butter.

  2. A few minutes before removing, dust the birds with flour to brown nicely.

  3. Serve on fried bread-crumbs or buttered toast soaked in gravy, garnished with watercress.

  4. Accompany with brown gravy and bread sauce.

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. Flour + watercresstop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together340 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Butter + saucetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,338 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Bread + watercresstop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together307 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Basting with butter adds fat and richness and helps the skin brown and stay moist.
Flour
Dusting the birds with flour near the end helps the skin brown nicely.
Fat bacon
Fat bacon adds moisture and flavour to the lean partridge meat during roasting.

The step that matters

Dusting with flour near the end. Flour added too early can burn before the birds are cooked, so it should go on only a few minutes before removing them from the fire, where it browns the skin.

“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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