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Boiled Partridges

Partridges boiled with salt, served with butter, lemon juice, and cayenne.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Boiled Partridges

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Remove feathers, clean, and wash the partridges thoroughly.

  2. Cut off the heads and truss the legs like boiled fowls.

Boil and serve

  1. Drop the partridges into a large pan of boiling water and add a little salt.

  2. Boil for 15 to 18 minutes until ready.

  3. Lift them out, dish quickly, and serve with a slice of fresh butter, lemon juice, and a sprinkling of cayenne in a hot 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. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  2. Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  3. Butter + peppertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Partridges
Provide the lean, tender meat that is cooked gently in boiling water.
Fresh butter
Adds richness and a smooth, fatty mouthfeel to the lean meat.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour of the rich meat and butter.

The step that matters

Boil for 15 to 18 minutes until ready. Boiling is timed to cook the birds through while keeping the meat tender. Overcooking toughens the proteins and dries the lean meat, so the birds should be lifted out as soon as they are done.

“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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