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Roast Partridges

Roast partridges served with fried breadcrumb garnish, gravy, and bread sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 17 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and allspice match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,874 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Roast Partridges

Ingredients

Directions

Roast the partridges

  1. Hang the partridges before a brisk fire.

  2. Baste constantly with ¼ pound of butter and roast for about 18 minutes.

  3. Garnish with fried crumbs.

  4. Serve with gravy and bread sauce in tureens.

Fry the crumbs

  1. Fry 3 ounces of bread crumbs in 1½ ounces of butter over gentle heat until pale yellow-brown.

  2. Drain on a sieve.

Make the bread sauce

  1. Boil ¼ pound of bread crumbs with 1 clove, 2 allspice, 3 shallots, and ¾ pint of milk for 15 minutes.

  2. Strain through a sieve.

  3. Return the sauce to the saucepan.

  4. Add 2 tablespoons of thick cream or 1 ounce of fresh butter.

  5. Boil for 2 minutes.

  6. Serve.

Make the gravy

  1. Combine stock, soy sauce, Harvey sauce, flour, salt, mustard powder, and a grain of cayenne in a saucepan.

  2. Boil uncovered until reduced by one-third (about 20 minutes).

  3. Add 1 tablespoon of port wine.

  4. Strain.

  5. Serve.

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. Clove + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Clove + shallottop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,677 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Allspice + shallottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together386 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  5. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

What each ingredient does

Partridges
Form the main meat that is roasted and basted until cooked through.
Butter
Bastes the birds, adding fat for browning and rich flavour.
Bread crumbs
Thicken the milk into a smooth sauce and, fried, give a crisp garnish.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the bread sauce, which thickens as the crumbs soften.
Stock
Provides the liquid base of the gravy, which reduces to concentrate flavour.
Flour
Thickens the gravy as it cooks with the stock.

The step that matters

Basting the partridges constantly. Lean game birds dry out quickly over direct heat. Frequent basting with melted butter keeps the surface moist and helps it brown evenly.

Swap the allspice

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, bread, clove, shallot, milk, cream, sauce):

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Capersfits better
  3. Cinnamonfits better
  4. Allspicethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, bread, clove, shallot, milk, cream, sauce. 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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