Name: Partridges
Ingredients: 2 partridges; 2 tablespoons butter; 2 tablespoons flour; ¼ teaspoon coarse sea salt; gravy for serving

Why it works: Butter and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Partridges

Oven, in the book's wordsA slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a slow oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Preheat your oven to 400°F (200°C).
Roast the partridges for about 15 minutes.
Baste the partridges with butter.
Sprinkle flour and salt over the partridges.
Serve the partridges on a dish with 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.

Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together124,287 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour 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

Partridges: Main protein; the meat is cooked through and served as the centre of the dish.
Butter: Adds fat and richness, helping the skin brown and the meat stay moist.
Flour: Dusted over the birds, it helps the surface brown and thickens the pan juices into gravy.

“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.