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Partridge Soup

A hearty soup made from partridges, ham, celery, onions, mutton shanks, and boiled water, finished with fried bread.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Partridge Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Skin the partridges and cut them into pieces.

  2. Slice the ham, celery, and onions.

Make the soup

  1. Fry the partridges, ham, celery, and onions in butter until browned, being careful not to burn them.

  2. Transfer the mixture to a stew pan and add boiling water, peppercorns, mutton shanks, and salt.

  3. Stew gently for 2 hours.

  4. Strain the soup through a sieve and return it to the stew pan.

  5. Add stewed celery and fried bread, and skim the soup when it is near boiling.

Serve

  1. Pour the soup into a tureen and serve hot.

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. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Celery + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,518 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Ham + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,536 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

  4. Mutton + breadtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,488 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  5. Ham + muttontop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together430 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

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 flavour, which is released into the broth during long gentle stewing.
Mutton shanks
Add body and savoury depth to the broth through collagen and marrow during slow stewing.
Onions
Add sweetness and savoury depth when browned in butter before stewing.
Ham
Adds salty, savoury flavour that seasons the broth.

The step that matters

Frying the partridges, ham, celery, and onions in butter. Browning builds deep savoury flavour through the Maillard reaction, but burnt butter and solids turn bitter and can taint the whole soup, so heat must be kept moderate.

Swap the celery

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (ham, onion, butter, mutton, bread):

  1. Garlicfits better
  2. Capersfits about as well
  3. Parsleyfits about as well
  4. Celerythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against ham, onion, butter, mutton, bread. 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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