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Roast Partridge

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

  1. Draw, wipe, and singe the partridge.

  2. Tie the rasher of bacon around the breast.

  3. Roast the partridge before a clear fire for 18 to 20 minutes.

  4. Remove the bacon and serve with gravy, garnished with watercresses.

  5. For a variation, moisten a slice of crustless bread in hot water or stock, press it lightly, butter it, and soak it in the dripping pan. Serve the partridge on the toast, optionally moistened with lemon juice.

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. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  3. Watercress + breadtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together307 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

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

  5. Bread + lemontop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,445 recipes

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

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

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against watercress, bread, butter. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

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