Name: To Boil Partridges
Ingredients: ½ pound of salt pork with a strip of lean; partridges; bread sauce (optional); 1 tablespoon butter; 2 tablespoons flour; 1 teacup cream; chopped parsley (optional)

Why it works: Bread and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

To Boil Partridges

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

Boil the salt pork in water for 1 hour while preparing the partridges.
Prepare the partridges by cutting off their feet and tying the legs down.

Cook and make the sauce

Boil the partridges in the pot with the salt pork for 30 minutes.
For the sauce, rub the butter and flour together, then boil in the cream.
Add chopped parsley to the sauce if preferred.

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.

Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together27,232 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).
Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together41,516 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).
Sauce + creamtop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together4,787 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together124,287 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Flour + parsleytop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together16,675 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

Salt pork: Flavours the cooking water and adds savoury fat to the broth.
Partridges: Form the main protein, cooked gently by boiling until tender.
Butter: Enriches the sauce and carries flavour, with flour giving it body.
Flour: Thickens the sauce when cooked with butter and cream.
Cream: Gives the sauce richness and a smooth, creamy texture.

Swap the parsley

The recipe marks parsley as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pork, bread, sauce, butter, flour, cream):

Nutmegfits better
Capersfits better
Garlicfits about as well
Parsleythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pork, bread, sauce, butter, flour, cream. 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.