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Soup

Partridge Soup

A hearty soup made with partridges, ham, celery, onions, mutton shanks, and boiled water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Celery and onion are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 18,518 recipes. Both carry guaiacol, which smells smoky, sweet. The science ↓

Partridge Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the partridges

  1. Skin the partridges and cut them into pieces.

Brown the base

  1. Brown the partridges, ham, celery, and onions in butter without burning.

Make the soup

  1. Transfer the browned mixture to a stew-pan with boiling water, peppercorns, mutton shanks, and salt.

  2. Stew gently for 2 hours.

  3. Strain the soup through a sieve.

  4. Return the strained liquid to the stew-pan with stewed celery and fried bread.

  5. Heat the soup until near boiling.

  6. Skim the soup.

  7. Serve hot.

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. Celery + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,518 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  2. Ham + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,536 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

  3. Mutton + breadtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,488 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  4. Ham + muttontop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together430 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  5. Onion + breadtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,676 recipes

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

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 and flavour that gives the soup its body.
Onions
Browning in butter adds sweetness and aroma to the broth.
Ham
Adds savoury, salty depth to the stock as it browns and stews.
Mutton shanks
Release collagen and gelatin during long stewing, giving the broth richness and body.

The step that matters

Browning without burning. Browning the partridges, ham, celery, and onions in butter builds rich flavour through the Maillard reaction. Burnt pieces turn bitter and taint the whole soup, so they must colour gently and evenly.

Swap the celery

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (ham, onion, mutton, bread):

  1. Garlicfits better
  2. Celerythe original
  3. Pepperfits about as well
  4. Capersfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against ham, onion, mutton, bread. 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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