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Partridge Pie

A savory pie filled with partridges, veal, bacon, eggs, mushrooms, parsley, and stock, topped with pastry.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and shallot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,737 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Partridge Pie

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a hot oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the partridges

  1. Draw, singe, and quarter the partridges, then fry them in hot butter until lightly browned.

Layer the pie

  1. Cut the veal into small thin slices and place them in the bottom of a pie dish, seasoning well with salt and pepper.

  2. Layer the partridges on top, interspersed with strips of bacon and quarters of hard-boiled egg.

  3. Sprinkle the mushrooms, parsley, and onion over the top, and season again with salt and pepper.

  4. Add stock to the depth of the dish and cover with pastry.

Bake

  1. Bake in a hot oven at 400°F (200°C) for about 1½ hours.

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. Parsley + shallottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,737 recipes

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

  2. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  3. Mushroom + shallottop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,982 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Mushroom + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,580 recipes

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

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, browned in butter first to develop savoury flavour.
Veal cutlet
Adds tender meat and body that softens and enriches the filling during baking.
Streaky bacon
Adds fat and salty, savoury flavour that bastes the meat as it cooks.
Hard-boiled eggs
Add richness and a firm, sliceable texture to the filling.
Good stock
Provides moisture and savoury depth that becomes a rich liquid under the pastry.

The step that matters

Add stock to the depth of the dish. Enough liquid keeps the meat moist as it bakes under the pastry, while too much can make the crust soggy and the filling watery. Stock should reach about the level of the meat.

Swap the shallot

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

  1. Shallotthe original
  2. Capsicumfits about as well
  3. Carrotfits about as well
  4. Spinachfits less well

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