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Partridge Au Choux

Partridges cooked with cabbage, ham or bacon, and butter in consommé, then served with the cabbage and stock.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Cabbage and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,081 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Partridge Au Choux

Ingredients

Directions

Braise

  1. Fry the cabbage, ham or bacon, and partridges in a stewpan for 10 minutes.

  2. Add the consommé, pepper, and salt.

  3. Let it stew for about 1 hour (1.5 hours for older partridges).

  4. Remove the cabbage and partridges.

Finish the cabbage

  1. Chop the cabbage.

  2. Add the butter, pepper, and salt to the chopped cabbage.

  3. Reduce the stock.

  4. Return the partridges to the stock to heat through.

Serve

  1. Place the cabbage in the center of a serving dish.

  2. Cut the partridges in half.

  3. Arrange the halves around the cabbage.

  4. Pour the stock around the dish.

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. Cabbage + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,081 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  2. Ham + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,475 recipes

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

  3. Cabbage + hamtop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together186 recipes

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

  4. Pepper + buttertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  5. Ham + peppertop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,058 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

White cabbage
Forms the bulk of the dish and absorbs the flavour of the stock and fat.
Ham or bacon
Adds salty, savoury fat that flavours the stewing liquid and the cabbage.
Partridges
Provides the main meat, which becomes tender during slow stewing.
Consommé
Gently cooks the meat and cabbage and forms the finished stock.
Butter
Adds richness and fat that rounds out the cabbage and stock.

The step that matters

Stewing time. Older partridges have tougher muscle and connective tissue, so they need the longer stew to become tender. Keeping the liquid at a gentle simmer cooks the meat slowly and keeps it moist rather than dry and stringy.

Swap the cabbage

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Mustardfits about as well
  3. Potatofits about as well
  4. Cabbagethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against ham, pepper, butter. 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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