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Partridge Salad

A salad of marinated partridges served on lettuce with garnishes of capers, parsley, gherkins, eggs, anchovies, and aspic jelly.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 ingredients
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Why it works: Tarragon and chervil match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 824 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Partridge Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the partridge

  1. Remove the gills from the cold partridges and cut them into convenient-sized pieces.

  2. Place the pieces in a bowl and sprinkle with coarse sea salt, cayenne pepper, minced parsley, and mixed herbs.

Marinate

  1. Add veal stock, tarragon vinegar, and salad oil. Let marinate for 2 hours.

Assemble and serve

  1. Wash and dry the lettuces, then shred them finely and lay them on a serving dish.

  2. Drain the marinated partridge pieces and place them on the lettuce.

  3. Garnish with dried capers, parsley, gherkins, hard-boiled eggs, anchovies, and aspic jelly.

  4. Just before serving, pour the marina over the salad.

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. Tarragon + cherviltop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together824 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Chervil + chivetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together370 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Chervil + lettucetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together396 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Tarragon + lettucetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together425 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Parsley + tarragontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

What each ingredient does

Cold partridges
Provide the main meat, which the marinade seasons and softens.
Tarragon vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens flavour and helps tenderise the meat during marinating.
Salad oil
Carries the herbs and seasoning and keeps the meat moist and glossy.
Veal stock
Adds savoury, meaty depth to the marinade.
Lettuces
Form the crisp, cool base that the dressed partridge rests on.

The step that matters

Pouring the marinade over the salad. Pour it just before serving. The vinegar and oil in the marinade will soften and wilt the finely shredded lettuce if it sits for long, so the salad loses its crispness.

Swap the parsley

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pepper, tarragon, chervil, chive, veal, vinegar, lettuce):

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Parsleythe original
  3. Thymefits less well
  4. Marjoramfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, tarragon, chervil, chive, veal, vinegar, lettuce. 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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