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Broiled Partridge

A dish of partridges roasted over a clear fire, seasoned with pepper, sea salt, and butter, garnished with cress and lemon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Watercress and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 579 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Broiled Partridge

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Pluck, draw, and remove the head and feet from the partridges.

  2. Cut each partridge in half, wash, and wipe dry.

  3. Dip the partridges in melted butter.

Broil and serve

  1. Broil over a clear fire until well done and nicely colored.

  2. Sprinkle with pepper and coarse sea salt.

  3. Add a teaspoon of melted butter on each bird.

  4. Garnish with curled cress or watercress and lemon slices.

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. Watercress + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together579 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

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

  3. Pepper + watercresstop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together983 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  5. Butter + peppertop 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 substance of the dish, cooking to tender meat under direct heat.
Melted butter
Coats the birds to add richness and moisture and helps them brown under the broiler.

The step that matters

Broil over a clear fire until well done and nicely colored. Direct heat browns the skin and cooks the meat through. A clear fire with steady heat, not flare-ups, gives even colour without scorching the outside before the inside is cooked.

“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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