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Partridge Pye. Pate De Perdreaux

A stuffed partridge baked in pastry with a liver and veal farce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Partridge Pye. Pate De Perdreaux

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the partridges

  1. Truss the partridges as you would for boiling.

  2. Singe, wipe, and lard them with large lard.

  3. Season with salt, pepper, fine spices, aromatics, hashed parsley, and young onions.

  4. Cut open the partridges at the back and fill with a little farce.

Make the farce

  1. Make a farce using the livers, veal, and lard; hash and season it.

  2. Beat the mixture in a mortar, wetting it with eggs and a little water.

Assemble the pie

  1. Roll out the pastry and raise it as directed for pâté de jambon.

  2. Spread some farce on the bottom of the pastry and place the partridges inside.

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 + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  2. Liver + vealtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together392 recipes

    Shared aroma: enoic acid (butter, cheesy).

  3. Parsley + oniontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  4. Pepper + oniontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  5. Onion + livertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,420 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

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

What each ingredient does

Partridges
Form the main body of the pie and carry its rich, gamey flavour.
Lard
Adds fat for moisture and richness in the meat and farce.
Livers
Give the farce a rich, savoury texture and deeper flavour.
Eggs
Bind the farce so it holds together when beaten and cooked.
Veal
Adds body and mild meatiness to the farce.

The step that matters

Beating the farce with eggs. Beating the farce thoroughly while adding the eggs and water helps it emulsify and bind into an even, cohesive mixture. Too little beating leaves it crumbly, while the eggs set during cooking to hold the filling together.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pepper, parsley, liver, veal, egg):

  1. Carrotfits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Shallotfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, parsley, liver, veal, egg. 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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