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Partridge, with Cabbage

Partridges cooked with cabbage, butter, flour, broth, sweet herbs, lard or fat pork, and salt pork.

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 ↓

Partridge, with Cabbage

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the partridges

  1. Truss the partridges and brown them in a stewpan with butter and flour.

  2. Moisten with broth and add the bunch of sweet herbs and lard or fat pork.

Cook the cabbage and finish

  1. Cook the cabbage separately with the salt pork until nearly done.

  2. Drain the cabbage and add it to the stewpan to finish cooking with the partridges.

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. Pork + cabbagetop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together919 recipes

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

  4. Flour + cabbagetop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together978 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Butter + cabbagetop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,397 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

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 browns and becomes tender as it simmers.
Butter
Adds fat and richness and helps the partridges brown.
Flour
Coats the birds and helps thicken the cooking liquid into a sauce.
Cabbage
Absorbs the flavour of the cooking liquid and becomes soft and sweet as it cooks.
Lard or fat pork
Adds fat that enriches the cooking liquid and carries flavour.

The step that matters

Browning the partridges in butter and flour. Browning builds deep flavour through the Maillard reaction, but the flour can scorch if the heat is too high. Gentle, even browning gives colour without burning, and the flour then helps thicken the broth.

Swap the cabbage

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

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Chivefits better
  4. Cabbagethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against 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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