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To Stew Partridges

A stew of partridges seasoned with force meat, butter, pepper, salt, mace, flour, and lemon pickle, simmered in gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and marjoram match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 957 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

To Stew Partridges

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the birds

  1. Stuff the trussed partridges with force meat.

  2. Rub butter with pepper, salt, and mace, then place the rubbed butter inside the birds.

  3. Sew the birds up.

  4. Dredge the sewn birds with flour.

Brown and stew

  1. Fry the birds in butter until light brown.

  2. Place the birds in a stewpan.

  3. Cover the birds with gravy.

  4. Add lemon pickle, lemon slices, and marjoram.

  5. Cover the stew.

  6. Stew for about 30 minutes.

  7. If needed, thicken the gravy.

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. Lemon + marjoramtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together957 recipes

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

  2. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  3. Pepper + marjoramtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,609 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Flour + marjoramtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,265 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Mace + marjoramtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together767 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

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

What each ingredient does

Partridges
Provide the main meat, which becomes tender through slow stewing in gravy.
Force meat
Adds richness and moisture to the stuffing as the birds cook.
Butter
Adds fat and helps the birds brown when fried.
Fine flour
Coats the birds so the surface browns and the gravy thickens.
Gravy
Supplies the liquid that keeps the birds moist while they stew.
Lemon pickle or anchovy
Adds acidity and savoury depth to the gravy.

The step that matters

Fry the birds in butter until light brown. Browning builds flavour through the Maillard reaction, but overcooking the surface can make it bitter and dry, so stop at light brown before stewing.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (meat, butter, pepper, flour, lemon, marjoram):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Sagefits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, butter, pepper, flour, lemon, marjoram. 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.

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