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Partridge Pie in a Disii

A baked pie with partridges, veal steak, ham, mushrooms, and puff pastry.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and thyme 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 ↓

Partridge Pie in a Disii

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Prepare the partridges by picking and singeing them.

  2. Cut off the legs at the knee.

  3. Season the partridges with pepper, coarse sea salt, parsley, thyme, and mushrooms.

Assemble and bake

  1. Place the veal steak and ham slice at the bottom of a baking dish.

  2. Add the seasoned partridges and pour in the broth.

  3. Cover the dish with puff pastry, sealing the edges.

  4. Brush the pastry with the beaten egg.

  5. Bake in a 400°F (200°C) oven for 1 hour.

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. Parsley + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Pepper + thymetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,585 recipes

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

  4. Thyme + mushroomtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  5. Pepper + mushroomtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,580 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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 becomes tender and flavourful during the long, covered bake.
Veal steak
Adds rich, savoury meat juices and body to the base of the pie.
Broth
Adds moisture and savoury flavour so the filling stays juicy while baking.
Puff pastry
Forms a flaky crust that seals in the filling and browns in the oven.
Egg
Brushed on the pastry, it promotes an even golden browning.

The step that matters

Sealing the pastry edges. A tight seal keeps steam and juices inside the dish, so the filling cooks through and stays moist rather than drying out.

Swap the thyme

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pepper, parsley, mushroom, veal, ham, egg):

  1. Thymethe original
  2. Marjoramfits about as well
  3. Tarragonfits less well
  4. Celeryfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, parsley, mushroom, veal, ham, egg. 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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