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Salad

Partridge Salad

A salad of roast partridge, lettuce, hard‑boiled eggs, gherkins, pickled onions, capers, dressed with oil, tarragon vinegar, shallot, salt, and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Shallot and capers match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 405 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Partridge Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. In a deep dish, combine the partridge, oil, tarragon vinegar, minced shallot, salt, and pepper.

Assemble and serve

  1. When ready to serve, place the partridge on a serving dish.

  2. Surround it with the lettuce hearts.

  3. Garnish with quartered hard boiled eggs, minced gherkins, pickled onions, and capers.

  4. Mix everything thoroughly with the dressing from the deep dish.

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. Shallot + caperstop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together405 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Tarragon + shallottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together602 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Lettuce + caperstop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together372 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Tarragon + lettucetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together425 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Tarragon + caperstop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together379 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Partridge
Provides the main meat, which soaks up the dressing and stays moist.
Oil
Carries the flavours of the dressing and adds richness and moisture.
Tarragon vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the dressing and cuts the richness of the meat and oil.
Shallot
Adds a mild, sharp onion aroma to the dressing.
Lettuce hearts
Provide crisp, cool texture that contrasts with the rich meat.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (tarragon, vinegar, shallot, pepper, lettuce, egg, capers):

  1. Mustardfits better
  2. Chivefits better
  3. Beetrootfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against tarragon, vinegar, shallot, pepper, lettuce, egg, capers. 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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