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Roast Partridges

Roast partridges seasoned with pepper, salt, and butter, cooked in a roaster with water and served with bread sauce and gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Pork and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 13,933 recipes. Both carry 2-furfurylthiol, which smells coffee, roasted. The science ↓

Roast Partridges

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Clean and truss the partridges as you would chickens.

  2. Bind thin slices of fat salt pork or bacon over the breasts.

  3. Place the partridges in a roaster with ½ cup boiling water.

  4. Season the birds with pepper and coarse sea salt.

Roast and serve

  1. Wash the birds with melted butter, allowing it to drip into the pan.

  2. Cover and cook for 45 minutes, basting four times with butter and water.

  3. Serve with a good bread sauce and pour several spoonfuls of gravy over the birds before serving.

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. Pork + buttertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,933 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

  2. Pork + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,121 recipes

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

  3. Pepper + buttertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 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
Form the main dish; their lean meat becomes tender and juicy with gentle covered roasting.
Fat salt pork or bacon
Bound over the breasts, it melts during cooking and bastes the lean meat, adding moisture and flavour.
Melted butter
Adds fat that promotes browning on the skin and enriches the pan juices used for basting.

The step that matters

Basting with butter and water. Lean game birds dry out easily. Regular basting adds moisture to the surface and helps the skin brown evenly, so the birds stay juicy during the covered roast.

“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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