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Soup

Partridge Soup

A soup made from partridges, ham, onions, celery, and water, finished with fried bread and stewed celery.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Partridge Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Remove the skin from the partridges and cut them into small pieces.

Make the soup

  1. Fry the partridge pieces, ham, onions, and celery in butter until browned.

  2. Add the fried mixture to 3 quarts of water with peppercorns.

  3. Simmer until the liquid reduces to just over 1 pint.

Finish and serve

  1. Strain the soup and add fried bread and stewed celery before serving.

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. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Onion + celerytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,518 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Ham + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,536 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

  4. Onion + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Onion + breadtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,676 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

Partridges
Provide the main meat flavour that gives the broth its character.
Ham
Adds savoury, salty depth to the broth when fried.
Onions
Browning in butter builds sweetness and savoury flavour in the base.
Butter
Carries the frying so the meat and vegetables brown and develop flavour.

The step that matters

Frying until browned. Browning the partridge, ham, onions and celery creates Maillard flavours that carry into the broth. Pale frying gives a flat, weaker soup.

Swap the celery

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

  1. Garlicfits better
  2. Capersfits about as well
  3. Parsleyfits about as well
  4. Celerythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against ham, onion, butter, bread. 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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