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Roast Partridges

Roast partridges seasoned with salt, pepper, and currant jelly, served with a gravy made from butter, flour, and boiling water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 ↓

Roast Partridges

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Clean and truss the partridges.

  2. Lard the partridges with thin slices of fat salt pork.

Roast

  1. Roast the partridges for 30 minutes.

Make the gravy

  1. To make the gravy, melt the butter in a basin until it boils.

  2. Stir in the flour and cook until dark brown.

  3. Pour in the boiling water and stir well.

  4. Season with salt, pepper, and the drippings from the partridges.

  5. Add 1 tablespoon of currant jelly to the gravy.

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. Butter + porktop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,933 recipes

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

  3. Pepper + porktop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,121 recipes

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

  4. Currant + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,856 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

  5. Pepper + flourtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

Fat salt pork
Lard strips melt into the birds, basting the meat and keeping it moist as it roasts.
Butter
Fat that is heated with the flour to start the gravy and carries its flavor.
Dry flour
Cooked in the butter until browned, it thickens the gravy and adds a toasty, nutty flavor.
Currant jelly
Adds sweetness and a fruity tang that balances the rich pan drippings.

The step that matters

Stir in the flour and cook until dark brown. Flour cooked in fat must be stirred constantly. Too little cooking leaves a raw, pasty taste, while too much browning turns it bitter and dark. The browned roux gives the gravy its color, flavor and thickening power.

Swap the currant

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

  1. Avocadofits better
  2. Lemonfits better
  3. Mangofits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, butter, flour, pork. 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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