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Partridge Soup

A soup made from partridges, beef broth, butter, bread crumbs, and spices, served with meatballs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Mace and nutmeg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,557 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Partridge Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the partridges

  1. Clean the partridges and dredge them with flour.

  2. Roast the partridges until half done, basting frequently.

  3. Remove the flesh from the breasts and set aside.

  4. Joint the remaining parts of the birds and stew gently in beef broth for 2 hours.

  5. Strain the broth and let it cool.

Make the balls

  1. Press the meat from the bones.

  2. Mince the meat, including the breasts, and pound smooth with half its bulk of butter and some dry bread-crumbs.

  3. Season with salt, cayenne, mace, and nutmeg.

  4. Moisten with 2 or 3 egg yolks and form into balls half the size of a thimble.

Finish the soup

  1. Skim the fat from the soup and heat it until boiling.

  2. Add the balls to the boiling soup and cook for about 10 minutes.

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. Mace + nutmegtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Beef + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,032 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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 meat for both the soup flavour and the small balls.
Beef broth
Forms the liquid base and carries the flavour of the stewed birds.
Butter
Enriches the pounded meat, adding fat for a softer, moister texture.
Dry bread-crumbs
Absorb moisture and help bind the pounded meat into a workable mixture.
Egg yolks
Bind the meat mixture so it holds its shape when formed into balls.
Flour
Dusts the birds so their surfaces brown lightly during roasting.

The step that matters

Forming and cooking the balls. The meat mixture must be bound just enough with egg yolk to hold its shape. Too little yolk lets the balls break apart in the boiling soup, and boiling too hard can also crumble them, so keep the soup at a steady boil only as directed.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (flour, beef, butter, bread, nutmeg, egg):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Capersfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, beef, butter, bread, nutmeg, egg. 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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