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Salmi of Partridge

A partridge stew simmered with reduced espagnole sauce, shallots, lemon peel, and served with fried bread.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon 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 ↓

Salmi of Partridge

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the partridges

  1. Lard and roast the partridges until underdone.

  2. Let them cool, then cut into pieces and remove the skin.

Make the stew

  1. In a stew-pan, arrange the partridge pieces with broth.

  2. Set the pan on hot cinders, avoiding immediate boiling.

  3. Add shallots and lemon peel, then the reduced espagnole sauce.

  4. Let it stew until reduced by half.

  5. Pass the sauce through a fine sieve.

Serve

  1. Drain the partridges and serve with fried bread slices between pieces.

  2. Pour the sauce around and squeeze lemon juice over.

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. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  2. Shallot + lemontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,523 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Pepper + shallottop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,898 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  4. Shallot + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,245 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  5. Shallot + saucetop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,303 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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 roasted until underdone and then gently stewed.
Shallots
Add a mild sweetness and aromatic flavour to the stewing liquid.
Reduced espagnole sauce
Thickens the stew and adds rich, concentrated savoury body to the sauce.
Good broth
Forms the moist cooking liquid that gently cooks the partridge pieces.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich sauce just before serving.

The step that matters

Set the pan on hot cinders, avoiding immediate boiling. Gentle heat keeps the stew at a simmer or below, so the partridge stays tender and the sauce does not turn cloudy or tough from vigorous boiling.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pepper, shallot, sauce, bread):

  1. Avocadofits about as well
  2. Limefits about as well
  3. Lemonthe original
  4. Cherryfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, shallot, sauce, bread. 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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