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Modern Cookery

Partridges stuffed with mushrooms, roasted or stewed, served with mushroom sauce or gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Mushroom and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 12,525 recipes. Both carry trans-2-decenal, which smells waxy, orange. The science ↓

Modern Cookery

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Prepare the partridges by filling them with mushrooms, sewing them up, and trussing securely.

Cook

  1. Roast the partridges on a vertical spit with the heads downwards, or tie them firmly to an ordinary spit.

  2. Roast for 30 to 40 minutes, or stew for 1 hour.

Make the sauce and serve

  1. For a sauce, mix fresh butter with arrowroot, and flavor with cayenne and catsup, wine, or store sauce.

  2. Serve the partridges with brown mushroom sauce, gravy, or simply with the prepared sauce.

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. Mushroom + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

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

  2. Mushroom + winetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,632 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methoxy-4-propylphenol (allspice, anise).

  3. Mushroom + arrowroottop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Butter + winetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,645 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

  5. Mushroom + macetop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,529 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

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, cooked whole and stuffed with mushrooms.
Mushrooms
Add moisture and savoury flavour to the stuffing and make the brown sauce.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, carrying flavour through the sauce.
Arrowroot
Thickens the butter sauce to a smooth, glossy consistency.

The step that matters

Roast or stew for the stated time. Game birds are lean, so overcooking dries the meat. Cooking only until the flesh is done and no longer pink keeps it moist and tender.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (mushroom, butter, arrowroot, wine):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against mushroom, butter, arrowroot, wine. 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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