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Roast Partridges

Roast partridges with pork fat, butter, and a simple gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 ↓

Roast Partridges

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Lard the partridges well with fat pork.

  2. Tie the legs down to the rump, leaving the feet on.

Roast

  1. Baste the partridges well with butter while cooking.

  2. Cook for 25 to 30 minutes.

Make the gravy

  1. For the gravy, put the drippings into a saucepan with the egg-sized piece of butter and a little flour.

  2. Add hot water and let it boil once.

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).

  2. Pork + buttertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,933 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

  3. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Pork + flourtop 27% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together11,187 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

Partridges
Form the main meat that the dish is built around.
Fat pork
Adds fat that bastes the lean game meat and keeps it moist as it roasts.
Butter
Adds richness and browning while basting the birds.
Flour
Thickens the drippings into a smooth gravy.

The step that matters

Cook for 25 to 30 minutes. Partridge is lean and dries out quickly, so timing matters. Overcooking toughens the meat, while the fat from larding and basting helps protect it during roasting.

“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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