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To Cook Partridge

A partridge roasted, basted with butter, floured, fried in lard, then steamed with hot water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 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 ↓

To Cook Partridge

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Remove feathers gently without tearing the skin.

  2. Cut off the head and feet, split open the back, and remove the entrails.

  3. Wash the partridge thoroughly.

Cook

  1. Broil in the stove, basting with butter until light brown.

  2. Sprinkle with flour and fry in lard until nicely browned.

  3. Add hot water, cover the pan, and steam.

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).

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

Partridge
Is the main protein that cooks through while its skin browns and crisps.
Butter
Adds richness and helps the skin brown evenly during basting.
Flour
Dusted on the bird before frying, it helps form a browned crust.
Lard
Conducts heat in the pan and adds fat that promotes browning and crisping.
Hot water
Creates steam in the covered pan that finishes cooking the bird through.

The step that matters

Add hot water, cover the pan, and steam.. Adding water and covering the pan traps steam that cooks the bird through gently. Too much heat or too little liquid can scorch the browned coating before the meat is tender.

“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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