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Salmis of Partridge

A dish of partridges braised with livers, lemon, spices, mustard, vinegar, wine, and olive oil.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Mustard and tarragon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 901 recipes. Both carry methyleugenol, which smells clove, spice. The science ↓

Salmis of Partridge

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Roast the partridges and keep the wings, breasts, legs, and rumps ready.

  2. Braise the livers of the partridges and the capon liver in a silver dish.

  3. Squeeze the juice of the lemons over the livers and grate the lemon rind on top.

  4. Season the bird limbs with salt, pepper, mace, and allspice.

Make the sauce

  1. Mix the mustard with tarragon vinegar and Chablis, then add to the dish.

  2. Place the dish over low heat, stirring the meat with a spoon and fork until saturated with sauce.

  3. When the sauce nears boiling, pour olive oil over the salmis and stir briefly before serving.

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. Mustard + tarragontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together901 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  2. Lemon + tarragontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,137 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  3. Allspice + mustardtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,928 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

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

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

  5. Allspice + tarragontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together127 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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 absorbs the sauce and becomes tender through gentle heating.
Livers
Melt into the sauce, adding richness and body to the dish.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the sauce and balances the rich livers.
French mustard
Adds sharpness and helps emulsify the sauce, giving it a more cohesive texture.
Chablis
Adds wine acidity and aroma that deepen the flavour of the sauce.
Olive oil
Adds fat and a smooth, glossy finish to the sauce.

The step that matters

Heating the sauce gently over low heat. If the sauce boils hard, the liver and egg-free emulsion can break and turn grainy, and the meat can toughen. Low heat with gentle stirring keeps the sauce smooth and lets the meat absorb it evenly.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (liver, lemon, pepper, allspice, mustard, tarragon, vinegar):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against liver, lemon, pepper, allspice, mustard, tarragon, vinegar. 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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