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To Roast Partridges

A dish of roasted partridges served on toast with gravy, bread sauce, and browned crumbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 ↓

To Roast Partridges

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the birds

  1. Pick, draw, and singe the partridges, leaving the heads on.

  2. Make a slit in the neck and remove the craw.

  3. Twist the neck around the wing and position the head beside the breast.

  4. Truss the legs and wings like fowls, crossing the feet over each other.

Season and roast

  1. Place 1 tablespoon of butter, seasoned with pepper and salt, inside each bird.

  2. Baste well with butter over a clear fire.

  3. When half done, dust a little flour over them to brown.

  4. Roast for 20 to 30 minutes.

Serve

  1. Serve on toasted bread, with gravy, browned crumbs, and bread sauce on the side.

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

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Pepper + breadtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,964 recipes

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

  4. Butter + peppertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  5. Bread + saucetop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,934 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

Partridges
Provide the main meat, which cooks quickly and needs basting to stay moist.
Butter
Adds fat for moisture and richness, and helps the skin brown during roasting.
Flour (in the method)
Dusted over the birds partway through, it helps the surface brown.
Toast
Serves as a base that soaks up juices from the roasted birds.

The step that matters

Dusting the birds with flour when half done. Flour added partway through roasting helps the surface brown evenly. Added too early it can scorch before the birds finish cooking.

“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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