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To Stew Partridges

A stew of partridges cooked with gravy, wine, mushroom ketchup, lemon pickle, anchovy, lemon slices, and marjoram.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Ketchup and anchovy match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 479 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

To Stew Partridges

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the partridges

  1. Truss the partridges and stuff their craws with forcemeat.

  2. Lard the sides with butter rolled in pepper, salt, and beaten mace.

  3. Put the butter into the bodies and sew up the vents.

  4. Dredge the partridges and fry them until light brown.

Stew and serve

  1. Place them in a stewpan with gravy, wine, mushroom ketchup, lemon pickle, anchovy, lemon slices, and marjoram.

  2. Cover and stew for about 30 minutes.

  3. If necessary, thicken the gravy and pour it over the partridges.

  4. Serve with boiled artichoke bottoms cut into quarters around the dish.

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. Ketchup + anchovytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together479 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  3. Butter + mushroomtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

  4. Pepper + mushroomtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,580 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Butter + anchovytop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,697 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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 dish, becoming tender as they stew in the gravy.
Forcemeat
Stuffs the birds, adding richness and moisture to the meat as it cooks.
Butter
Carries the seasonings into the meat and adds richness and moisture while frying and stewing.
Gravy
Forms the stewing liquid, carrying flavour and body that thicken the sauce.
Madeira wine or white wine
Adds acidity and aromatic depth to the stewing liquid.
Mushroom ketchup
Adds concentrated savoury, umami flavour to the gravy.

The step that matters

Frying until light brown. Browning the floured surface creates flavour through the Maillard reaction and helps the coating set before stewing. Frying too long or too hot can darken the crust and make the birds dry or bitter before the stew begins.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, pepper, madeira wine, mushroom, ketchup, lemon, anchovy):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, pepper, madeira wine, mushroom, ketchup, lemon, anchovy. 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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