Skip to main content
Main

A Partridge Soup

A soup made from partridges, ham, onion, celery, butter, water, peppercorns, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Onion and celery are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 18,518 recipes. Both carry guaiacol, which smells smoky, sweet. The science ↓

A Partridge Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Remove the skins from the partridges and cut them into pieces.

Make the soup

  1. In a large pot, fry the partridge pieces in butter until very brown.

  2. Add the ham, onion, and celery, and continue frying.

  3. Transfer the mixture to a stewpan and add water, peppercorns, and salt.

  4. Boil slowly until the soup reduces to 1½ pints.

  5. Strain the soup and serve hot.

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. Onion + celerytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,518 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  2. Butter + oniontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Butter + hamtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,475 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

  4. Ham + oniontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,159 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, sweet).

  5. Ham + celerytop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,608 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-decalactone (peach, creamy).

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 and flavour of the soup.
Butter
Fat that browns the partridge pieces, building deep savoury flavour.
Ham
Adds salty, smoky depth to the broth.
Onion
Sweetens and deepens the flavour as it fries.
Celery
Adds aromatic background flavour to the broth.

The step that matters

Frying the partridge pieces until very brown. Browning caramelises the meat's surface through the Maillard reaction, creating the deep flavour the broth depends on. Pale meat yields a flat, weak soup.

Swap the celery

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, ham, onion):

  1. Garlicfits better
  2. Capersfits about as well
  3. Thymefits about as well
  4. Celerythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, ham, onion. 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.

You might also like

Cream of Celery SoupCream of Celery Soup113 recipesCelery StewCelery Stew25 recipesCelery CroquettesCelery Croquettes16 recipesCelery Cream SoupCelery Cream Soup15 recipes