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Partridges, Aux Chotix

Partridges cooked with bacon, sausage, onions, carrots, cabbage, and herbs simmered in water or stock.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Chervil and chive match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 370 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Partridges, Aux Chotix

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the bacon, sausage meat, onions, carrots, and cabbage into dice.

  2. Prepare the cabbage by soaking it in water, then pressing out the excess.

Cook the partridges

  1. Add all ingredients to a pot and cover with boiling water or stock.

  2. Simmer for 1.5 to 2 hours.

Cook the cabbage

  1. Place the cabbage in a saucepan, cover with water, and boil for 30 minutes.

  2. Strain the cabbage and add it to the pot with the partridges.

Finish and serve

  1. Simmer for an additional 2 hours if the partridges are older.

  2. Check if the partridges are done by pricking them with a fork.

  3. Serve the partridges on top of the cabbage.

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. Chervil + chivetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together370 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Parsley + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

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

  3. Chervil + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together774 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

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

  5. Chive + parsleytop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,150 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Cabbage
Becomes tender and soft while absorbing the flavour of the broth and fat.
Sausage meat
Adds fat and savoury richness that flavours the cooking liquid and vegetables.
Bacon
Adds fat and smoky, salty flavour to the pot as it renders.
Onions
Add aroma and mild sweetness as they soften during the long simmer.
Carrots
Add sweetness and colour to the dish as they soften.

The step that matters

Checking the partridges with a fork. Older birds have tougher connective tissue that needs long, gentle simmering to break down. Pricking the flesh with a fork shows whether it is tender, so the extra two hours are added only when needed and the birds do not turn dry or stringy.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (meat, pepper, chervil, chive, parsley, carrot, cabbage):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Turnipfits better
  3. Leekfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, pepper, chervil, chive, parsley, carrot, cabbage. 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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