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Stewed Partridge

A partridge stewed with butter, mace, lemon peel, flour, and water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and pepper 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 ↓

Stewed Partridge

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the partridge into joints.

  2. Remove the largest bones.

Make the gravy and stew

  1. Heat the butter in a small saucepan.

  2. Fry the best parts of the partridge.

  3. Add a small piece of lemon peel, mace, pepper, and salt.

  4. Stir in the flour and water.

  5. Add the removed bones.

  6. Bring the mixture to a boil.

  7. Cover the saucepan.

  8. Let it stew slowly for 45 minutes or until tender.

Serve

  1. Serve the best pieces on a dish.

  2. Strain the gravy over the pieces.

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. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  2. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Mace + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,257 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  4. Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  5. Lemon + flourtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,404 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

Partridge
Provides the meat that becomes tender through slow, covered stewing.
Butter
Adds fat for frying the partridge pieces, carrying flavour and richness into the gravy.
Flour
Thickens the water into a gravy as it heats and simmers.

The step that matters

Let it stew slowly for 45 minutes or until tender. Gentle, covered simmering breaks down connective tissue in the meat. A hard boil toughens and dries the flesh, so keep the heat low and the lid on until the joints feel tender.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, lemon, flour, pepper):

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Marjoramfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, lemon, flour, pepper. 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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