Why it works: White wine and olive match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and 2,764 recipes mention both. Both carry ethyl isobutyrate, which smells fruity, ethereal. The science ↓
The recipe
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare the partridges
Lard the partridges with the fine larding pork.
Make the glaze
Line a narrow saucepan with fragments of the same pork, minced roots, and onion.
Season and moisten the mixture with white wine.
Reduce the mixture to a glaze.
Cook the partridges
Cook the partridges in very little moisture with stock.
Reduce the cooking liquid to a glaze several times.
Drain the partridges.
Untruss the partridges.
Make the sauce
Strain the stock.
Skim off the fat from the stock.
Reduce the strained stock.
Incorporate the reduced stock into brown sauce.
Add Madeira to the sauce at the same time.
Dress and serve
Dress the partridges on a dish.
Garnish the partridges with olives stuffed with baked forcemeat.
Cover the partridges with some sauce.
Serve the rest in a sauce-boat.
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 aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.
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White wine + olivetop 5% of all pairsAroma overlapstrongMentioned together2,764 recipes
Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).
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Carrot + celerytop 1% of all pairsAroma overlapstrongMentioned together10,172 recipes
Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).
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Carrot + oniontop 4% of all pairsAroma overlapstrongMentioned together21,599 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
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Pork + oniontop 4% of all pairsAroma overlapstrongMentioned together18,199 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
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Celery + oniontop 5% of all pairsAroma overlapmoderateMentioned together18,506 recipes
Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).
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.
Flavor stand-ins for the celery
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pork, carrot, onion, white wine, sauce, olive):
- Garlicbetter flavor fit
- Thymebetter flavor fit
- Parsleyabout as good a flavor fit
- 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. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).
“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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