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Partridges, Stewed

A stew of partridges cooked with onions, carrots, sweet herbs, mace, salt, and cayenne, served hot with sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,555 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Partridges, Stewed

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Truss the partridges as if for boiling.

  2. Place them in a stewpan and cover with boiling stock or water.

  3. Add the onions, carrots, sweet herbs, mace, salt, and cayenne.

Cook and serve

  1. Simmer gently until the partridges are tender, about 30 minutes.

  2. Remove 2 cups of the cooking liquid to make a sauce.

  3. Serve the partridges hot with the sauce poured over them.

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 + peppertop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,555 recipes

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

  2. Onion + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

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

  3. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  4. Carrot + macetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,592 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  5. Mace + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,257 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

Mace and pepper barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 12,257 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
Provide the main meat, which becomes tender through gentle simmering in liquid.
Onions
Add savoury sweetness and aroma to the cooking liquid as it simmers.
Carrots
Add gentle sweetness and aroma to the cooking liquid, which later forms the sauce.

The step that matters

Simmer gently until tender. A gentle simmer cooks the partridges evenly and keeps the meat moist and tender, while a hard boil toughens muscle fibres and can make the meat dry.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Celeryfits better
  3. Cuminfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, carrot, pepper. 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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