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Partridges

Partridges cooked with bacon, eschalots, mushrooms, veal gravy, and orange juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and orange match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,402 recipes. Both carry ethyl 2-methylbutyrate, which smells fruity, apple. The science ↓

Partridges

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).

  2. Season the partridges with pepper, salt, mace, eschalots, mushrooms, and bacon in a mortar.

  3. Strew the mixture over the partridges and lay thin slices of bacon on top.

Bake and serve

  1. Cover with a lid and bake for 2 hours.

  2. Remove the lid, take out the bacon, and skim off the fat.

  3. Add the veal gravy and orange juice, then serve hot.

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. Pepper + orangetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,402 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl 2-methylbutyrate (fruity, apple).

  2. Pepper + mushroomtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,580 recipes

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

  3. Mushroom + vealtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,446 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

  4. Pepper + macetop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,257 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  5. Mushroom + orangetop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together224 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

Pepper and mace barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 12,257 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
Form the main body of the dish, cooking slowly to become tender under the cover.
Bacon
Adds savoury fat that bastes the birds as it renders during the long covered bake.
Veal gravy
Provides a rich, savoury liquid that carries the flavour of the dish when added at the end.
Eschalots
Contribute mild sweetness and aromatic depth to the seasoning mixture.
Orange juice
Adds acidity and fresh citrus brightness that balances the rich gravy and fat.

The step that matters

Skimming the fat after removing the lid. Rendered fat pooling in the dish can make the gravy greasy and heavy, so it should be skimmed off before the gravy and orange juice are added.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Marjoramfits better
  3. Rosemaryfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, mushroom, veal, orange. 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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