Skip to main content
Main

Roast Partridge

Roast partridges served on fried bread crumbs, seasoned with salt, pepper, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Butter and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Roast Partridge

Oven, in the book's wordsA very hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a very hot oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Roast the partridges

  1. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).

  2. Place the partridges in the oven and brown them quickly.

  3. Season the birds with salt and pepper, then baste with butter.

  4. Cook for about 30 minutes.

Fry the crumbs and serve

  1. In the meantime, heat the fat in a frying pan until smoking hot.

  2. Fry the bread crumbs until brown, then remove with a skimmer and drain on brown paper.

  3. Serve the roast partridge on the fried bread crumbs.

  4. If desired, make gravy from the drippings in the pan.

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 + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Pepper + breadtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,964 recipes

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

  3. Pepper + buttertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Partridges
Provide the main lean meat, which cooks quickly and needs gentle roasting to stay tender.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, helping the birds brown and keeping the surface moist while basting.
Bread crumbs
Frying turns them crisp and golden, giving a crunchy base that soaks up juices under the birds.

The step that matters

Browning the birds quickly at the start. Searing the surface at high heat builds browning and flavour before the slower roasting, while the interior stays tender instead of drying out.

“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.

You might also like

Brown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesWhite BreadWhite Bread80 recipesBread OmeletteBread Omelette60 recipesOatmeal BreadOatmeal Bread51 recipes