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To Flew Partridges

Fried partridges served with a gravy of Madeira wine, mushroom ketchup, lemon pickle, and anchovy, accompanied by artichoke bottoms and egg yolks.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 ingredients
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Why it works: Ketchup and anchovy match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 479 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

To Flew Partridges

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Truss the partridges as for roasting and fluff the craws.

  2. Lard the partridges on each side of the breast with butter mixed with pepper, salt, and mace.

  3. Stuff the bellies with the butter mixture and sew up the vents.

  4. Dredge the partridges and fry them until light brown.

Stew and serve

  1. Place the fried partridges in a stew pan with gravy, Madeira wine, mushroom ketchup, lemon pickle, mushroom powder, anchovy, lemon, and marjoram.

  2. Cover and stew for 30 minutes.

  3. Remove the partridges and thicken the gravy by boiling it slightly.

  4. Pour the gravy over the partridges and serve with artichoke bottoms and hard-boiled egg yolks.

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. Ketchup + anchovytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together479 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  3. Butter + mushroomtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

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

  4. Pepper + mushroomtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,580 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Butter + anchovytop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,697 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Butter
Enriches the birds with fat, keeping the meat moist and adding richness as it melts.
Gravy
Forms the moist braising liquid that cooks the partridges and becomes the sauce.
Madeira wine
Adds sweetness and depth of flavour to the gravy during stewing.
Hard-boiled egg yolks
Add a soft, rich texture to the finished plate alongside the birds.

The step that matters

Frying the partridges until light brown. Browning in fat creates flavour through the Maillard reaction. Frying only until light brown leaves the birds ready for gentle stewing, so they should not be pushed to dark colour or dried out before the stew.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, pepper, madeira wine, mushroom, ketchup, lemon, anchovy):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Marjoramfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, pepper, madeira wine, mushroom, ketchup, lemon, anchovy. 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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