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A Cold Partridge Pie

A cold pie made with partridges, truffles, veal, bacon, ham, stock, and sherry.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and shallot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,737 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

A Cold Partridge Pie

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the pie

  1. Prepare the partridges by filling them with good farce and placing a whole peeled truffle inside each.

  2. In a pie dish, layer a few slices of veal, then a thick layer of farce, followed by the partridges and four raw truffles for each.

  3. Cover the partridges and truffles with sheets of bacon, then seal the pie.

  4. Bake the pie for four hours at 300°F (150°C).

Make the stock

  1. In a stewpan, place thin slices of lean ham, the bones and giblets of the partridges, any other giblets available, an old fowl, parsley, mace, and shallots.

  2. Add ½ pint of stock and simmer for half an hour.

  3. Then add 3 quarts of good stock and boil for two hours.

  4. Strain the liquid and reduce it to one quart, then mix in 1 pint of sherry wine and set aside until the pie is baked.

Finish and serve

  1. After the pie has cooled for half an hour, pour the strained liquid into the pie.

  2. Let the pie stand for 24 hours before cutting.

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. Parsley + shallottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,737 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  2. Truffle + vealtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together815 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

  3. Truffle + hamtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together516 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  4. Shallot + winetop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together841 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-heptenal (green).

  5. Ham + sherrytop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together377 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-ethyl-2-methoxyphenol (smoky, clove).

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 cooked whole inside the pie crust.
Lean ham
Adds savoury, salty depth to the stock and the pie.
Shallots
Add aromatic sweetness and depth to the stock.
Sherry wine
Adds acidity and aroma to the reduced stock.
Slices of veal
Lines the pie, adding meaty richness and moisture.

The step that matters

Reducing the strained stock to one quart. Reducing concentrates the gelatin and flavour of the stock, so that once it is poured into the cooled pie it sets to a firm, savoury jelly rather than a thin, watery liquid.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (truffle, veal, ham, parsley, shallot, sherry, wine):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Tarragonfits better
  3. Capersfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against truffle, veal, ham, parsley, shallot, sherry, wine. 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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