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Stewed Partridges or Pigeons

A stew of partridges simmered in a sauce thickened with flour and ketchup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,451 recipes. Both carry ethyl octanoate, which smells fruity, wine. The science ↓

Stewed Partridges or Pigeons

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Clean and place the partridges in a small kettle.

  2. Dredge the partridges with coarse sea salt, black pepper, 2 tablespoons of flour, mace, and cloves.

  3. Cover with cold water and seal tightly.

Stew and serve

  1. Simmer for 2 hours.

  2. Thicken the sauce with 3 tablespoons of flour.

  3. Stir in 2 tablespoons of ketchup.

  4. Simmer for 1 hour longer.

  5. Serve.

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. Pepper + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  2. Mace + clovetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  3. Flour + ketchuptop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,435 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Flour + clovetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,671 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Pepper + macetop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,257 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

Pepper and mace barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 12,257 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

Partridges
Provide the main meat, which becomes tender through long, gentle simmering.
Flour
Dredging coats the birds, and later flour thickens the cooking liquid into a sauce.
Ketchup
Adds tomato-based sweetness and acidity to the sauce.

The step that matters

Sealing the kettle before simmering. A tight seal traps steam so the birds cook in moist heat and the liquid does not reduce too quickly, keeping the meat tender over the long simmer.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pepper, flour, clove, ketchup):

  1. Allspicefits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Marjoramfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, flour, clove, ketchup. 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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