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Partridges, Aux Choux

A stew of partridges cooked with cabbage, bacon, sausage, onions, carrots, and herbs in butter and stock.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Chervil and chive match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 370 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Partridges, Aux Choux

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Dress and truss the partridges.

  2. Prepare the cabbage by soaking it in water, then pressing out the water.

Make the stew

  1. Melt the butter in a stewpan over high heat.

  2. Sprinkle the flour over the butter, stirring in a little at a time.

  3. Add the partridges to the pan.

  4. Pour in the stock.

  5. Cut the carrot into dice and add it along with the bacon and sausage meat.

  6. Simmer for 2 hours.

Cook the cabbage and serve

  1. Place the cabbage in a saucepan, cover with boiling water, and boil for 1 hour.

  2. Strain the cabbage and cut it in half, then add it to the stewpan with the partridges to finish cooking.

  3. Check if the partridges are done by pricking them with a fork.

  4. Serve the partridges on the cabbage.

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. Chervil + chivetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together370 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Onion + chivetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,907 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  4. Clove + cherviltop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together199 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  5. Flour + chivetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,168 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Partridges
Provide the main meat, which becomes tender during the long, slow simmer.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, and helps build the base of the sauce with the flour.
Flour
Thickens the stock into a smooth, lightly bodied sauce when stirred in with the butter.
Stock
Supplies the liquid that gently cooks the partridges and forms the sauce.
Cabbage
Soaks up flavour from the braising liquid and serves as the bed for the partridges.
Sausage meat
Adds savoury fat and flavour that enriches the cooking liquid.

The step that matters

Simmering the partridges for 2 hours. Gentle, steady simmering breaks down the connective tissue in older birds, making them tender. Boiling hard can toughen the meat and make the sauce cloudy.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, flour, meat, onion, pepper, chervil, chive):

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Tarragonfits better
  3. Parsleyfits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, meat, onion, pepper, chervil, chive. 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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