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Salmis of Partridges

Partridges served with a sauce of flour, butter, stock, red wine, shallot, herbs, lemon, and seasonings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
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Why it works: Thyme and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,057 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Salmis of Partridges

Oven, in the book's wordsA slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Blend the flour and butter in a saucepan without browning it.

  2. Add the stock or gravy, red wine, shallot, herbs, salt, and pepper.

  3. Simmer for 30 minutes, then strain the sauce.

Finish and serve

  1. Simmer the partridge joints in the sauce without boiling.

  2. Add lemon juice before serving.

  3. Serve the partridges on fried sippets with the sauce over them.

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. Thyme + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Parsley + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  3. Thyme + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,973 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  4. Shallot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,737 recipes

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

  5. Shallot + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,476 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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 is already cooked and gently reheated in the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the sauce when blended with butter and cooked gently.
Butter
Adds richness and carries the flour so it thickens smoothly without lumps.
Red wine
Gives the sauce its main body, deep colour and acidic, fruity flavour.
Stock or gravy
Adds savoury depth and liquid that the sauce reduces and thickens around.
Shallot
Adds a mild, sweet onion-like aroma that flavours the sauce as it simmers.

The step that matters

Simmer the partridge joints without boiling. Boiling toughens cooked meat and can make the sauce break or turn cloudy, so keep it at a gentle simmer.

“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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