Name: To Broil Partridges
Ingredients: partridges; pepper; coarse sea salt; butter; salt pork

Why it works: Butter and pork are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 13,933 recipes. Both carry 2-furfurylthiol, which smells coffee, roasted. The science ↓

To Broil Partridges

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare and cook

Split the partridges through the back.
Broil them for fifteen minutes.

Serve

Serve with pepper, coarse sea salt, and a little butter.
Broil a piece of salt pork to serve alongside for added flavor.

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.

Butter + porktop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together13,933 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).
Pepper + porktop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together22,121 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
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: Form the main dish, cooked whole after splitting so the meat heats evenly under the broiler.
Butter: Adds richness and moisture to the served birds.
Salt pork: Adds savory fat and flavor alongside the birds.

“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.