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Roast Partridges

Roast partridges seasoned with salt, pepper, and butter, cooked with water and served with bread sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Pork and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 13,933 recipes. Both carry 2-furfurylthiol, which smells coffee, roasted. The science ↓

Roast Partridges

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Clean and truss the partridges like chickens.

  2. Bind thin slices of fat pork or bacon over the breasts.

  3. Place in a roaster with ½ cup of boiling water.

  4. Season with salt and pepper.

Roast

  1. Brush with melted butter, allowing it to drip into the pan.

  2. Cover and cook for 45 minutes.

  3. Baste four times with butter and water.

  4. Serve with bread sauce.

  5. Pour several spoonfuls of gravy over the birds.

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. Pork + buttertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,933 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

  2. Pork + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,121 recipes

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

  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
Form the main meat that is roasted whole and carved for serving.
Fat pork or bacon
Bastes the breasts with fat as it renders, keeping the lean meat moist.
Melted butter
Adds fat that browns the skin and carries flavour into the birds.

The step that matters

Cover and cook for 45 minutes. Covering traps steam so the lean breast meat cooks gently and stays moist; uncovered, the birds can dry out before the legs are done.

“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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