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To Roast Partridges

Roasted partridges served with bread sauce and brown gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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

  1. Hang the partridges until they can be kept without becoming offensive.

  2. Carefully pick, draw, and singe the birds. Wipe the insides thoroughly with a clean cloth.

  3. Truss the birds with the head under the wing and legs drawn close together.

Roast

  1. Flour the partridges when first laid to the fire and baste them generously with butter.

  2. Roast for 30 to 40 minutes, adjusting time for desired doneness.

Serve

  1. Serve with bread sauce and brown gravy poured over them. Optionally, serve on fried bread-crumbs.

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 lean meat that is the centre of the dish and is cooked whole.
Butter
Bastes the birds, adding richness and helping the skin brown as it roasts.
Bread sauce
Adds moisture and a soft, creamy contrast to the lean roasted meat.
Brown gravy
Adds moisture and savoury depth to the meat when poured over it.

The step that matters

Roast for 30 to 40 minutes, adjusting time for desired doneness.. Partridge meat is lean and dries out quickly, so checking the birds near the end of the range helps keep them moist while cooking through.

“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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