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To Slew Partridges

A stew of partridges stuffed with forced meat, flavored with butter, pepper, mace, and Madeira wine, served with artichoke bottoms.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

To Slew Partridges

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the partridges

  1. Truss the partridges and stuff their cavities with forced meat.

  2. Lard the partridges along the sides.

  3. Roll butter with pepper, coarse sea salt, and powdered mace, then place the mixture inside the bodies.

  4. Sew up the vents and dredge the partridges.

Stew and serve

  1. Fry them until light brown.

  2. Place them in a stew pan with gravy, Madeira or white wine, mushroom ketchup, lemon pickle, anchovy, sliced lemon, and sweet marjoram.

  3. Cover and stew for about 30 minutes.

  4. If necessary, thicken the gravy and pour it over the partridges.

  5. Serve with boiled artichoke bottoms arranged around the dish.

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 + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  2. White wine + mushroomtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,765 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity).

  3. Butter + mushroomtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

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

  4. Butter + white winetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,083 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  5. White wine + lemontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,832 recipes

    Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Partridges
Form the main body of the dish, becoming tender as they stew in the gravy.
Butter
Adds richness and moisture, and helps the partridges brown when fried.
Gravy
Forms the liquid base of the stew, carrying flavour and keeping the meat moist.
Madeira or white wine
Adds acidity and depth, brightening the rich gravy.
Forced meat
Stuffs the cavities, adding moisture and savoury richness to the birds.
Artichoke bottoms
Add a mild, tender vegetable element served alongside the partridges.

The step that matters

Frying until light brown. Browning through frying creates savoury flavour through the Maillard reaction. Stopping too early leaves the birds pale and bland, while overcooking dries the surface before stewing.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (meat, butter, pepper, white wine, mushroom, ketchup, lemon):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Marjoramfits better
  3. Parsleyfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, butter, pepper, white wine, mushroom, ketchup, lemon. 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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