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Parteidges with Olives

A dish of partridges cooked with larding pork, minced roots, onion, wine, stock, Madeira, and brown sauce, garnished with stuffed olives.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and celery match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,173 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Parteidges with Olives

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the partridges

  1. Lard the partridges with the fine larding pork.

Make the glaze

  1. Line a narrow saucepan with fragments of the same pork, minced roots, and onion.

  2. Season and moisten the mixture with white wine.

  3. Reduce the mixture to a glaze.

Cook the partridges

  1. Cook the partridges in very little moisture with stock.

  2. Reduce the cooking liquid to a glaze several times.

  3. Drain the partridges.

  4. Untruss the partridges.

Make the sauce

  1. Strain the stock.

  2. Skim off the fat from the stock.

  3. Reduce the strained stock.

  4. Incorporate the reduced stock into brown sauce.

  5. Add Madeira to the sauce at the same time.

Dress and serve

  1. Dress the partridges on a dish.

  2. Garnish the partridges with olives stuffed with baked forcemeat.

  3. Cover the partridges with some sauce.

  4. Serve the rest in a sauce-boat.

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. Carrot + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Carrot + oniontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

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

  3. Celery + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,518 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Onion + olivetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together29,779 recipes

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

  5. Carrot + olivetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,861 recipes

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

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 larded and braised until tender in little liquid.
Larding pork
Adds fat that bastes the lean partridge meat and keeps it moist during cooking.
White wine
Acidity and moisture that help build the flavour of the reduced glaze.
Madeira
Adds sweetness and a rich aroma to the finished sauce.
Brown sauce
Forms the body and savoury base of the finished sauce.

The step that matters

Reduce the cooking liquid to a glaze several times. Repeated reduction concentrates flavour and gelatin from the stock and drippings, giving a glossy, intensely savoury glaze. Letting it scorch or over-reduce turns it bitter, while too little reduction leaves the sauce thin and weak.

Swap the celery

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pork, carrot, onion, white wine, sauce, olive):

  1. Garlicfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Parsleyfits about as well
  4. Celerythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pork, carrot, onion, white wine, sauce, olive. 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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