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Boiled Partridges

Boiled partridges seasoned with salt, lemon juice, cayenne pepper, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Boiled Partridges

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Remove feathers, clean, and wash the partridges thoroughly.

  2. Cut off the heads and truss them like boiled fowls.

Boil and serve

  1. Drop the partridges into a large pan of boiling water.

  2. Add a little coarse sea salt and boil for 15 to 18 minutes.

  3. Lift them out, dish them quickly, and serve with a slice of butter, lemon juice, and a sprinkle of cayenne pepper.

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. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. Lemon + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  3. Pepper + buttertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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 is cooked gently in boiling water until tender.
Butter
Adds richness and fat to the finished birds when served as a slice on top.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich, mild flavour of the meat.

The step that matters

Lift them out, dish them quickly, and serve. Partridge meat is lean and overcooks easily, so leaving the birds in the hot water past the stated boiling time can make them dry and tough. Serving promptly keeps them moist and at their best.

“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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