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Partridges, Stewed

Stewed partridges cooked with bacon, butter, gravy, and cabbage.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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 ↓

Partridges, Stewed

Oven, in the book's wordsA brisk oven

Ingredients

Directions

Brown the birds

  1. In a stew-pan, heat the butter and fry the bacon until brown.

  2. Add the partridges and turn them until they are very brown, ensuring the bacon is on the breast.

Stew

  1. Pour in the gravy and add the meat and vegetable trimmings.

  2. Slice the boiled cabbage and mix with butter, pepper, and salt.

  3. Let everything stew gently for an hour, turning the birds frequently.

Serve

  1. Serve the partridges with the bacon underneath and the cabbage around, skimming the sauce carefully.

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. Pork + meattop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,208 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  3. Pork + buttertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,933 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

  4. Pork + cabbagetop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together919 recipes

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

  5. Pork + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,121 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Partridges
Form the main dish; browning and slow stewing make the meat tender and flavourful.
Pork or bacon
Fat renders into the pan, browning the birds and flavouring the sauce.
Gravy
Liquid base that moistens the birds and forms the sauce during stewing.
Cabbage
Soft, absorbent vegetable that soaks up butter and sauce as a side.

The step that matters

Browning the partridges. Searing the birds until deeply brown builds colour and savoury flavour through the Maillard reaction. Pale birds give a flat, washed-out sauce and stew flavour.

Swap the cabbage

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

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Onionfits better
  4. Cabbagethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pork, butter, meat, 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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