Skip to main content
Main

Partridge Au Choux

A partridge cooked with bacon, cabbage, carrot, onion, and bouquet garni, served with gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Cabbage and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,081 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Partridge Au Choux

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Tie the partridge with slices of bacon.

  2. Cut the cabbage into quarters.

  3. Blanch the cabbage quarters, then cool and drain.

Stew

  1. Lay thin slices of bacon, the blanched carrot, onion, and bouquet garni in a stewpan.

  2. Place the partridge in the center of the stewpan.

  3. Surround the partridge with the cabbage.

  4. Season the dish with salt and pepper.

  5. Add gravy to half the height of the contents.

  6. Cover lightly.

  7. Stew gently until the partridge is tender.

Serve

  1. Cut the partridge into pieces.

  2. Arrange the pieces in the middle of the dish.

  3. Surround the pieces with cabbage and bacon.

  4. Pour a little gravy over the entire dish.

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. Cabbage + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,081 recipes

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

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

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

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

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

  4. Cabbage + carrottop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,505 recipes

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

  5. Cabbage + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,001 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Partridge
Provides the main meat, which becomes tender through slow, gentle stewing.
Cabbage
Forms the bulk of the dish and absorbs flavour from the gravy and bacon as it cooks.
Fat bacon
Adds fat and savoury flavour, basting the partridge and cabbage as they stew.
Gravy
Supplies moisture and liquid that cooks the partridge and cabbage gently in the stewpan.

The step that matters

Stew gently until the partridge is tender. Covered, gentle heat with only partial liquid lets connective tissue soften slowly. Boiling hard toughens the meat and dries the pan, so keep the heat low and the lid on.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against cabbage, 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.

You might also like

Carrot SoupCarrot Soup134 recipesRed CabbageRed Cabbage65 recipesStewed CabbageStewed Cabbage58 recipesBaked CabbageBaked Cabbage51 recipes