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Consomme De Perdreaux

A clear consommé made from partridges, onions, carrot, celery, herbs, seasoning, and clarified suet, served with breast strips or quenelles.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and celery match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,173 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Consomme De Perdreaux

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the partridge

  1. Roast the partridges until cooked.

  2. Let the partridges cool.

  3. Cut the cooled partridges up, saving the breast meat.

  4. Chop the remaining meat and bones into small pieces.

Make the bouillon

  1. Prepare a bouillon.

  2. Let the bouillon cool, removing any fat that rises to the surface.

Make the consommé

  1. In a stewpan, combine the chopped partridge, onions, carrot, celery, herbs, seasoning, and clarified suet.

  2. Fry the mixture until fragrant.

  3. Extract the essence from the mixture.

  4. Strain the essence into the bouillon.

  5. Let the combined mixture cool.

  6. Clarify the mixture with meat until it is bright and clear.

  7. Serve with neat strips of partridge breast or quenelles made from the breast meat.

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. Carrot + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Onion + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  3. Onion + celerytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,518 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Partridges
Provide the main flavour and the meat and bones that build the essence.
Clarified suet
Carries aromatic flavour when the mixture is fried, adding richness to the broth.
Onions
Add sweetness and savoury depth to the essence as they cook.
Carrot
Adds subtle sweetness and body to the essence.
Celery
Contributes aromatic, savoury background flavour to the essence.

The step that matters

Clarify the mixture with meat. Clarification uses a meat raft that traps cloudy particles as the liquid gently simmers. Boiling vigorously breaks the raft and leaves the consommé cloudy, so it must be kept at a gentle simmer.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Parsnipfits better
  2. Turnipfits better
  3. Leekfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against carrot, celery. 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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