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Chartreuse of Partridges

A molded dish of braised partridges surrounded by carrots, turnips, spinach, and cabbage, served with salmis sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and turnip match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,002 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Chartreuse of Partridges

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Boil the carrots and turnips until tender but not overcooked.

  2. Prepare the spinach by passing it through a sieve.

  3. Line a round or oval mold with buttered paper.

Assemble the chartreuse

  1. Cut the carrots, turnips, and pressed spinach into decorative shapes.

  2. Fit the shapes into the mold to create a design on the bottom and sides.

  3. Make a wall of pressed braised cabbage in the mold.

  4. Fill the center with braised partridge meat and a little salmis sauce.

Serve

  1. Steam the chartreuse until hot.

  2. Turn it out onto a serving dish and pour some salmis sauce around the base.

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. Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Turnip + spinachtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together320 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Carrot + spinachtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together870 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

  4. Butter + saucetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,338 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Butter + meattop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,594 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Butter and sauce barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 15,338 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Carrots
Provide colour and a tender, cooked texture for the decorative design.
Turnips
Add mild sweetness and a tender, firm texture to the decorative layer.
Spinach
Adds green colour and a smooth, moist texture to the decorative shapes.
Braised partridge meat
Forms the savoury centre, contributing the main flavour and substance of the dish.

The step that matters

Steam the chartreuse until hot. Heating gently keeps the moulded shapes intact and the partridge moist. Overheating can dry the meat and loosen the design before it is turned out.

Swap the carrot

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (turnip, spinach, butter, meat, sauce):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Lettucefits better
  4. Carrotthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against turnip, spinach, butter, meat, sauce. 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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