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Partridges, Soup of

A soup made from partridges, butter, carrots, celery, ham, onion, mace, shallots, bay leaf, parsley, thyme, stock, brown roux, sherry, salt, and cayenne.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 16 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, Soup of

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the partridges

  1. Roast the partridges over a brisk fire until browned outside and half cooked.

  2. Cut off the breasts of the partridges.

  3. Break up the bodies of the partridges.

Make the soup base

  1. Melt butter in a saucepan.

  2. Add carrots, celery, ham, onion, mace, shallots, bay leaf, parsley, and thyme to the melted butter.

  3. Cook over gentle heat until the mixture turns reddish-brown.

  4. Add the bodies of the birds to the mixture.

  5. Gradually stir in stock and brown roux.

  6. Remove fat and scum from the soup.

  7. Let the soup boil.

  8. Strain the soup through a fine sieve.

Finish and serve

  1. Return the soup to the saucepan.

  2. Add the partridge breasts cut into small pieces.

  3. Add sherry.

  4. Season with salt and cayenne.

  5. Heat thoroughly without boiling.

  6. Serve immediately.

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 + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,873 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  3. Clove + shallottop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,677 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Carrot + oniontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  5. Celery + clovetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,668 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-decalactone (peach, creamy).

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 and flavour of the soup.
Butter
Carries the vegetables and aromatics, adding richness and helping them brown gently.
Brown roux
Thickens the stock and adds a deeper colour and nutty, toasted flavour.
Ham
Adds savoury, salty depth to the stock base.
Onion
Adds sweetness and aromatic depth as it cooks down in the base.
Sherry
Adds acidity and a fragrant, wine-like aroma to finish the soup.

The step that matters

Heat thoroughly without boiling. Once the partridge breasts and sherry are added, boiling can toughen the delicate meat and dull the sherry's aroma, so gentle heat keeps both tender and fragrant.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, carrot, celery, ham, onion, clove, shallot):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, carrot, celery, ham, onion, clove, shallot. 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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