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Consomme De Perdreaux

A clear partridge consommé made with clarified suet and marsala.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and celery match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,173 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Consomme De Perdreaux

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the partridges

  1. Pluck, draw, and cut up the partridges, saving the breast meat and using the rest.

  2. Make a strong bouillon from the partridges and strain it.

  3. Cool the bouillon.

  4. Remove any fat from the bouillon.

  5. Pour the bouillon into a large bowl.

Make the consommé

  1. In a stewpan, combine the partridge pieces, bones, giblets, onions, carrot, celery, herbs, seasoning, and suet.

  2. Fry the mixture until golden.

  3. Moisten the mixture with the bouillon.

  4. Bring the mixture to a boil.

  5. Simmer gently for 1 hour.

  6. Strain the mixture.

  7. Cool the strained stock.

  8. Clarify the stock.

  9. Finish with ½ glass of marsala before serving.

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. Carrot + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Onion + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

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

  3. Onion + celerytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,518 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Partridges
Provide the main flavour and body of the stock and consommé.
Clarified suet
Adds fat for frying the mixture, carrying flavour and contributing richness.
Onions
Add sweetness and savoury depth when fried and simmered into the stock.
Marsala
Adds aroma and a fortified wine sweetness to the finished consommé.

The step that matters

Clarify the stock. Clarifying the cooled stock removes cloudy particles so the consommé becomes clear. Stock must be cooled and fat removed first, because fat and heat can cloud the result and prevent a clean, bright broth.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (carrot, celery):

  1. Parsnipfits better
  2. Turnipfits better
  3. Leekfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against carrot, celery. 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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