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Roast Partridge

A roasted partridge served with bacon, watercresses, toast, and gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Watercress and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 579 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Roast Partridge

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Draw, wipe, and singe the partridge.

  2. Tie the rasher of bacon around the breast.

  3. Place the partridge before a clear fire and roast for 18 to 20 minutes.

  4. Remove the bacon.

Prepare the toast

  1. Moisten the toast in hot water or stock.

  2. Press the toast lightly.

  3. Butter the toast.

  4. Soak the toast in the dripping pan.

Serve

  1. Optionally moisten the toast with lemon juice.

  2. Serve the partridge on the prepared toast.

  3. Serve the partridge with gravy.

  4. Garnish with watercresses.

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. Watercress + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together579 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

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

  3. Watercress + buttertop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together842 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Partridge
Is the main cooked meat, roasted whole so its flesh becomes tender and browned.
Bacon
Wrapped around the breast, it bastes the lean meat with melting fat as it roasts.
Toast
Soaks up the dripping and juices, giving a moist base under the roasted bird.
Butter
Adds richness and helps the toast brown and carry flavour.

The step that matters

Roast for 18 to 20 minutes. Partridge is lean and cooks quickly, so overcooking dries the breast. Checking doneness near the end of the window keeps the meat juicy.

Swap the lemon

The recipe marks lemon as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (watercress, butter):

  1. Avocadofits about as well
  2. Lemonthe original
  3. Limefits less well
  4. Pearfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against watercress, butter. 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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