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Partridges, Braised

Partridges braised with bacon, carrots, onions, herbs, stock, wine, and lemon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Partridges, Braised

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Line a stewpan with bacon.

  2. Truss the partridges with their legs turned in, then place them on the bacon.

  3. Add the diced carrots and onions around the partridges.

Braise

  1. Pour the stock and white wine over the whole.

  2. Simmer gently for 1 hour.

Finish the sauce and serve

  1. Remove the birds and place them on a hot dish.

  2. Skim the sauce.

  3. Boil the sauce up.

  4. Strain the sauce.

  5. Add lemon juice to the sauce before pouring it over the birds.

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. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. Carrot + peppertop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,555 recipes

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

  3. Carrot + oniontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

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

  4. Carrot + lemontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,351 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  5. White wine + lemontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,832 recipes

    Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).

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 through slow simmering in liquid.
Fat bacon
Adds fat and savory flavor to the pan and the braising liquid.
Carrots
Add sweetness and aromatic flavor to the braising liquid and sauce.
Onions
Add savory depth and aromatic flavor to the braising liquid and sauce.
White wine
Adds acidity and aroma that help build the flavor of the sauce.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the finished sauce.

The step that matters

Simmer gently for 1 hour. A gentle simmer lets the connective tissue in the partridges break down slowly. A hard boil toughens the meat and can make the sauce cloudy and greasy.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (carrot, pepper, white wine, lemon):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Parsnipfits better
  3. Spinachfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against carrot, pepper, white wine, lemon. 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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