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Soup

Partridge Soup

A hearty soup made with partridges, ham, celery, onions, mutton shanks, and boiled water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Celery and onion are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 18,518 recipes. Both carry guaiacol, which smells smoky, sweet. The science ↓

Partridge Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Skin the partridges and cut them into pieces or bruise them in a mortar.

  2. Slice the ham, celery, and onions.

Brown and simmer

  1. Fry all ingredients in butter until browned, being careful not to burn them.

  2. Transfer the mixture to a stew-pan and add boiling water, peppercorns, mutton shanks, and salt.

  3. Stew gently for two hours, then strain through a sieve.

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. Celery + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,518 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  2. Ham + muttontop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together430 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  3. Onion + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Ham + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,475 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

  5. Butter + muttontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,781 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
Provide the main meat flavour and body of the soup.
Onions
Add sweetness and savoury depth as they brown in butter.
Mutton shanks
Add gelatine and rich meaty flavour to the long-simmered broth.
Ham
Adds salty, smoky meat flavour to the broth.
Butter
Carries heat for browning and adds a rich, nutty flavour.

The step that matters

Frying until browned without burning. Browning the meat and vegetables builds deep flavour through the Maillard reaction, but scorched pieces turn bitter and can taint the whole soup, so heat should stay moderate and the pan should be watched closely.

Swap the celery

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (ham, onion, butter, mutton):

  1. Garlicfits better
  2. Capersfits about as well
  3. Parsleyfits about as well
  4. Celerythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against ham, onion, butter, mutton. 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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