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Partridges, Braised, with Celery Sauce

Braised partridges served with hot celery sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and celery match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,173 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Partridges, Braised, with Celery Sauce

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. Singe, draw, wipe, and truss the partridges with their wings inside.

  2. In a saucepan, lay the pork rind and add the sliced carrot, onion, bay leaves, and thyme.

Braise

  1. Add the trussed partridges and season with salt and pepper.

  2. Cook until the partridges are golden, then moisten with white broth.

  3. Place the saucepan in a 400°F (200°C) oven and cook for 20 minutes.

Serve

  1. Serve with hot celery sauce poured over the partridges.

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. Carrot + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Carrot + thymetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  3. Thyme + celerytop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,193 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Pepper + celerytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

What each ingredient does

Partridges
Form the main dish, with their flesh cooking tender in the braising liquid.
Pork rind
Lines the pan and releases fat and gelatin, adding richness and body to the braise.
White broth
Moistens the pan so the birds braise gently rather than drying in the oven.
Celery sauce
Adds a savoury, aromatic finish that complements the rich, tender birds.

The step that matters

Browning the partridges before adding broth. Searing until golden builds browned flavour through the Maillard reaction, which broth added too early would prevent. Browning first gives the braise its depth.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pork, carrot, thyme, pepper, celery, sauce):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Turnipfits better
  3. Parsnipfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pork, carrot, thyme, pepper, celery, sauce. 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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