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Broiled Partridge

A dish of partridges seasoned with oil, salt, pepper, butter, Worcestershire sauce, mustard, and lemon, then broiled.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Broiled Partridge

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut off the neck and feet of the partridges and split them open through the back.

  2. Remove the spinal bones, then flatten the partridges by wrapping them in a coarse towel.

  3. Mix the oil, salt, and pepper on a plate, then coat the partridges in the seasoning.

Broil and serve

  1. Broil the partridges for 10 minutes on each side using a double broiler.

  2. Combine the butter, Worcestershire sauce, French mustard, and lemon juice, then spread over the partridges before serving.

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

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

  2. Pepper + mustardtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,430 recipes

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

  3. Mustard + lemontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,816 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Sauce + mustardtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,120 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Butter + saucetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,338 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

Butter and sauce barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 15,338 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 cooks through under the broiler.
Butter
Adds richness and moisture to the meat as it melts into the sauce.
Worcestershire sauce
Adds savoury, tangy depth to the basting mixture.
French mustard
Adds sharpness and helps the spread cling to the birds.

The step that matters

Broil each side for 10 minutes. Partridges are small and lean, so broiling for too long dries the meat. Watching the color and turning at the halfway point keeps the flesh juicy while the skin browns.

Swap the mustard

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pepper, butter, sauce, lemon):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Spinachfits about as well
  4. Mustardthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, butter, sauce, lemon. 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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