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Salmi of Partridge

A stew of partridges simmered in a sauce of beef stock, port wine, lemon juice, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,150 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Salmi of Partridge

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut up the partridges and remove all the skin.

  2. Pound the bones and trimmings in a mortar.

Make the sauce

  1. Put the bones and trimmings into a stewpan with beef stock, eschalots, peppercorns, salt, and cloves.

  2. Simmer for 30 minutes, then strain the sauce into a clean stewpan.

  3. Add port wine, lemon juice, and sugar to the strained sauce.

  4. Let it simmer for 10 minutes, then add the partridges.

Stew and serve

  1. Stew gently for 45 minutes and serve in the sauce with fried sippets.

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 + lemontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,150 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  2. Clove + port winetop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together914 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  3. Beef + port winetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together626 recipes

    Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).

  4. Beef + clovetop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  5. Lemon + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

Lemon and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 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 main meat, which becomes tender through gentle stewing in the sauce.
Beef stock
Forms the savoury liquid base that the sauce is built on.
Port wine
Adds sweetness and depth of flavour to the sauce.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich sauce and balances the sweetness.

The step that matters

Simmer the partridges gently. Stewing gently keeps the meat tender and prevents it from toughening. A hard boil tightens muscle proteins and can make the sauce cloudy.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, clove, port wine, sugar):

  1. Figfits better
  2. Applefits better
  3. Vanillafits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, clove, port wine, sugar. 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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