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Partridges with Oysters

Partridges stuffed with oysters, liver, butter, parsley, chervil, and ham, roasted and served with oyster sauce and raspberry or currant jelly.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Partridges with Oysters

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Prepare the partridges for roasting and fill them with stuffing made from chopped liver, oysters, butter, parsley, and chervil. Season with salt and pepper.

  2. In a stewpan, melt 2 tablespoons of butter and heat thoroughly.

  3. Place the stuffed partridges in the pan.

  4. Cut three slits on each side of the breast bone and insert a little red pepper and the juice of ½ lemon.

Roast and make the sauce

  1. Roast the partridges for 30 minutes.

  2. Blanch 1½ dozen large oysters and place them in a stewpan with 1 tablespoon of grated ham and ⅓ cup of gravy.

Serve

  1. Dish the partridges and pour the oyster sauce around them.

  2. Serve with raspberry or currant jelly.

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. Parsley + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

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

  2. Parsley + cherviltop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together774 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  4. Chervil + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together358 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 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
The main meat, roasted whole around its stuffing so it stays moist and cooks evenly.
Oysters
Add a briny, savoury flavour and moisture to both the stuffing and the sauce.
Butter
Adds richness and fat that helps the meat brown and keeps the stuffing moist.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich oyster and meat flavours.

The step that matters

Blanching the oysters. Oysters turn tough and rubbery when overheated, because their proteins tighten with prolonged heat. Blanch them only briefly, just until they plump and their edges curl, so they stay tender in the sauce.

Swap the raspberry

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (oyster, butter, parsley, chervil, pepper, lemon, ham):

  1. Limefits better
  2. Orangefits better
  3. Avocadofits better
  4. Raspberrythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against oyster, butter, parsley, chervil, pepper, lemon, ham. 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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