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Partridges with Cabbage

A stew of partridges cooked with butter, bacon or ham, sweet herbs, and cabbage, served on a bed of cabbage.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Partridges with Cabbage

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. In a stew-pan, combine the partridges, butter, bacon or ham, sweet herbs, and warm water.

  2. In another stew-pan, place the Savoy cabbage and add the beef or pork dripping.

Cook and serve

  1. Stew the cabbage slowly until nearly done, then drain it.

  2. Add the drained cabbage to the stew-pan with the partridges and cook for 30 minutes.

  3. Serve the partridges on a bed of cabbage.

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. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Ham + beeftop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,729 recipes

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

  3. Cabbage + beeftop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together872 recipes

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

  4. Butter + hamtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,475 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

  5. Butter + beeftop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,847 recipes

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

Butter and flour 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 main meat, which cooks gently in the butter and herb-scented liquid.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, carrying flavour and helping the meat stay moist.
Bacon or ham
Adds salty, smoky fat that flavours the stew and the cabbage.
Savoy cabbage
Forms the bed under the birds and absorbs flavour from the dripping and juices.
Beef or pork dripping
Provides fat for slow cooking the cabbage, making it tender and rich.

The step that matters

Stew the cabbage slowly until nearly done. Slow cooking softens the cabbage's tough fibres gently. Cooking it too fast or too long turns it mushy and can leave it bitter, so it should be drained just before it is fully tender.

Swap the cabbage

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

  1. Leekfits better
  2. Onionfits better
  3. Shallotfits better
  4. Cabbagethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, ham, beef. 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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