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Partridge Au Gratin

Roasted partridges served over a breadcrumb and herb gratin.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Chive and shallot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 450 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-ol, which smells mushroom, earthy. The science ↓

Partridge Au Gratin

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Remove the legs from the roast partridges.

  2. In a serving dish, mix butter with bread crumbs, parsley, chives, shallots, salt, and pepper.

Make the gratin and serve

  1. Place the dish in a Dutch oven before the fire to create a gratin.

  2. Warm the partridges in the broth.

  3. Add salt, pepper, parsley, and vinegar to the partridges.

  4. Serve the partridges on top of the gratin, covered with the bread crumb mixture.

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. Chive + shallottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

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

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

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

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

  4. Parsley + chivetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,150 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

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

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, which is cooked gently in broth to stay tender.
Butter
Adds fat and richness and helps the bread crumb topping brown.
Bread crumbs
Form a crisp, savoury topping over the partridges.
Shallots
Add a mild onion-like aroma to the crumb mixture.
Broth
Adds moisture and flavour as the partridges warm through.

The step that matters

Warm the partridges in the broth. Gentle heat in liquid lets the lean partridge meat warm through and absorb moisture. Too much heat toughens the proteins and dries the meat.

Swap the chive

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, bread, parsley, shallot, pepper, vinegar):

  1. Chivethe original
  2. Mustardfits about as well
  3. Capsicumfits less well
  4. Leekfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, bread, parsley, shallot, pepper, vinegar. 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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