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A Partridge Pie

A savory pie of partridges, veal, force‑meat, bacon, truffles, and herbs, served with a rich stock sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 18 ingredients
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Why it works: Veal and liver match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 392 recipes. Both carry enoic acid, which smells butter, cheesy. The science ↓

A Partridge Pie

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the pie

  1. Preheat oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. In a pie dish, layer slices of veal at the bottom.

  3. Add force-meat.

  4. Place boned partridges filled with force-meat and a whole raw truffle in each.

  5. Season with fine herbs and chopped mushrooms.

  6. Cover the partridges with slices of bacon.

  7. Cover the pie.

  8. Garnish as desired.

Make the sauce

  1. In a stew-pan, combine ham pieces, partridge bones, livers, gizzards, and any loose giblets.

  2. Add shallots and mace.

  3. Cover with a little stock and simmer for 10 minutes.

  4. Add 3 pints of stock and ½ pint of Madeira.

  5. Boil gently for 2 hours.

  6. Strain the mixture.

  7. Melt butter in a stew-pan.

  8. Add enough flour to absorb the butter.

  9. Gradually stir in the strained liquid.

  10. Boil slowly for a few minutes.

  11. Strain through a tammy.

Bake and serve

  1. Pour off the fat from the pie and add the sauce.

  2. Optionally, add fat livers and sweetbread cut as a ragout.

  3. Bake for 3 hours.

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. Veal + livertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together392 recipes

    Shared aroma: enoic acid (butter, cheesy).

  2. Mushroom + shallottop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,982 recipes

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

  3. Truffle + mushroomtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,900 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

  4. Veal + truffletop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together815 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

  5. Truffle + hamtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together516 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

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 cooks gently inside the pie and stays moist.
Force-meat
Forms a soft, tender stuffing that keeps the birds moist as they bake.
Flour
Thickens the butter and strained liquid into a smooth, body-giving sauce.
Butter
Enriches the sauce with fat and carries flavour through the roux.
Madeira
Adds sweetness and a rich, aromatic depth to the sauce.
Bacon
Adds fat and savoury flavour as it covers and bastes the partridges.

The step that matters

Straining and thickening the sauce. Adding flour to butter and then liquid needs gentle stirring and slow boiling so lumps do not form and the starch thickens evenly. Straining through a tammy removes solids so the sauce is smooth.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (veal, meat, truffle, mushroom, ham, liver, shallot):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, meat, truffle, mushroom, ham, liver, shallot. 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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