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Partridges, Potted

A dish of partridges cooked in butter, coated with flour and water paste, baked, cooled, then packed in jars with clarified butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 13,015 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Partridges, Potted

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

  1. Prepare and truss the partridges for roasting, seasoning them inside and out with pepper, salt, and grated nutmeg.

  2. Place a piece of butter the size of a large egg inside each bird and pack them breast down in a pie dish. Dot the birds with additional butter.

  3. Cover with a paste made of flour and water.

Bake and pot

  1. Bake in a moderate oven at 350°F (175°C) for one hour.

  2. Do not remove the covering until the dish is completely cold.

  3. Remove the birds, discard the gravy, cut them into pieces, and pack them tightly in a potting jar.

  4. Cover with clarified butter and store in a cool place.

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. Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

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

  2. Nutmeg + flourtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 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 + nutmegtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together24,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Pepper + flourtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

Partridges
Form the dish's main body, cooked whole and then portioned for potting.
Butter
Adds richness and moisture, and is later poured over as clarified butter to seal the jar.
Flour
Forms the paste crust that encloses the birds and holds in moisture while baking.

The step that matters

Leave the paste covering on until the dish is completely cold. Removing the crust while the birds are still hot lets moisture and fat escape, so the meat dries out. Cooling in the sealed crust lets the birds stay tender and juicy.

Swap the nutmeg

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

  1. Parsleyfits about as well
  2. Turmericfits about as well
  3. Nutmegthe original
  4. Sagefits about as well

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