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Partridge Fricassee

A stew of partridge simmered in water, thickened with flour, seasoned with butter, pepper, and sea salt, served over hot biscuits.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and biscuit match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 889 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Partridge Fricassee

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare and cook

  1. Wash the partridge well.

  2. Place it in a saucepan and cover with hot water, replenishing as needed.

  3. Remove any scum that rises while cooking.

  4. Cook until tender.

  5. Add a little salt to the water before boiling.

Make the gravy

  1. Thicken the gravy with flour mixed with water.

  2. Season with butter, pepper, and coarse sea salt.

Serve

  1. Split hot biscuits and place them on a hot platter.

  2. Pour the meat and gravy over the biscuits and serve hot.

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. Flour + biscuittop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together889 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Pepper + biscuittop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together841 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  3. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Butter + biscuittop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,009 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  5. Flour + peppertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter 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

Flour
Thickens the gravy as it cooks with the liquid, giving it body.
Butter
Adds fat and richness to the finished gravy.

The step that matters

Thicken the gravy with flour mixed with water. Flour must be mixed smooth with cold water before it goes into hot liquid. Added dry or lumpy, it clumps and the gravy turns out grainy instead of silky.

“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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