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Boiled Partridges

A simple boiled partridge served with lemon and various sauces.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and celery match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,467 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Boiled Partridges

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wash the partridges well and truss them.

Boil and serve

  1. Place the partridges in boiling water and sprinkle 1 teaspoon of coarse sea salt over the partridges.

  2. Simmer gently for 15 minutes for young birds or 20 minutes for older birds.

  3. Serve with sliced lemon and your choice of sauces and game gravy.

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. Lemon + celerytop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,467 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Celery + breadtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,110 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Lemon + breadtop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,445 recipes

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

  4. Sauce + breadtop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,934 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Sauce + celerytop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,360 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Partridges
Provide the main protein, which becomes tender through gentle simmering rather than high heat.

The step that matters

Simmer gently. Keeping the water at a gentle simmer rather than a hard boil lets the meat cook through and stay tender instead of tough and stringy.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sauce, celery, bread):

  1. Lemonthe original
  2. Avocadofits about as well
  3. Figfits less well
  4. Limefits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against sauce, celery, bread. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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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