Name: Baked Partridges
Ingredients: partridges; 1 can fresh oysters; bread crumbs; butter; sage; hot water; mushroom sauce; lemon slices

Why it works: Sage and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 887 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Baked Partridges

Ingredients

Directions

Split the partridges in the back.
Make a dressing with the oysters, bread crumbs, butter, and sage.
Fill the partridges with the dressing and sew them up.
Place the filled partridges in a baking pan with a little hot water and butter.
Bake until well done.
Serve with mushroom sauce and garnish with lemon slices.

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.

Sage + lemontop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together887 recipes

Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).
Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together27,232 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).
Butter + mushroomtop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together12,525 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).
Bread + mushroomtop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,536 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Oyster + buttertop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together8,184 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, green).

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

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (oyster, bread, butter, sage, mushroom, sauce):

Lemonthe original
Applefits about as well
Pumpkinfits about as well
Plumfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against oyster, bread, butter, sage, mushroom, sauce. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.