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Partridge Pie

A savory pie filled with roasted partridges, ham, veal cutlet, mushrooms, and stock, topped with puff pastry.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Partridge Pie

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).

  2. Pluck, draw, and wipe the partridges; cut off the legs at the first joint and season inside.

  3. Roast the partridges with pepper, salt, minced parsley, and a small piece of butter.

Assemble

  1. Line a pie dish with the veal cutlet.

  2. Place the slice of ham on top and season with pepper and salt.

  3. Place the partridges in the dish and pour over the stock.

Bake

  1. Line the edges of the dish with puff pastry, cover with more pastry, and brush with egg yolk.

  2. Bake for 45 minutes to 1 hour.

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 + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  2. Pepper + mushroomtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,580 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  3. Parsley + mushroomtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,132 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  4. Mushroom + vealtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,446 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

  5. Mushroom + hamtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,486 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

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, whose flavour concentrates as the pie roasts and bakes.
Veal cutlet
Forms the base layer and adds savoury meat that becomes tender during slow baking.
Ham
Adds salty, savoury depth that seasons the meat layers beneath the crust.
Stock
Adds moisture and savoury flavour, forming a light sauce within the pie.
Puff pastry
Its layers of fat and dough separate and puff in the oven, creating a flaky crust.
Egg yolk
Brushed on top, it promotes golden browning and a glossy finish on the crust.

The step that matters

Bake for 45 minutes to 1 hour. The pie must cook long enough for the veal and partridges to become tender and no longer pink, while the pastry browns and sets properly.

Swap the parsley

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pepper, mushroom, veal, ham, egg):

  1. Parsleythe original
  2. Thymefits about as well
  3. Marjoramfits about as well
  4. Celeryfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, mushroom, veal, ham, egg. 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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