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Fillets of Partridges a LA Vopalliere

Partridges and cabbage cooked with espagnole sauce and stock.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Sauce and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 15,338 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Fillets of Partridges a LA Vopalliere

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Prepare the partridges and cabbage as described.

  2. Pound the meat and livers after blanching them.

Make the sauce

  1. In a stewpan, combine the pounded meat with 4 large spoonfuls of espagnole sauce and heat without boiling.

  2. Rub the mixture through a napkin and place it in a dish.

  3. In another stewpan, add 4 large spoonfuls of espagnole sauce and 2 spoonfuls of stock.

  4. Bruise the carcasses and add them to the stewpan; cook, skim, and strain the mixture.

  5. Reduce the sauce and add a small walnut-sized piece of glaze.

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. Sauce + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,338 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Cabbage + buttertop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,397 recipes

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

  3. Cabbage + saucetop 29% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together437 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

Sauce and butter 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 is pounded with the livers into a smooth base for the dish.
Espagnole sauce
Adds a rich, savoury brown sauce base that gives body and depth to the finished sauce.
Stock
Thins the espagnole sauce and adds meaty flavour to the sauce.
Glaze (in the method)
Adds concentrated meat flavour and body to the sauce as it reduces.

The step that matters

Heat the pounded meat without boiling. Boiling a mixture containing finely pounded meat and livers can toughen the proteins and make the texture grainy, so it should be heated gently.

Swap the cabbage

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

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Mustardfits better
  3. Onionfits better
  4. Cabbagethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sauce, butter. 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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