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To Pot Partridges

Partridges seasoned with mace, allspice, white pepper, and salt, baked in butter and covered with a flour paste.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Mace and allspice are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,189 recipes. Both carry methyleugenol, which smells clove, spice. The science ↓

To Pot Partridges

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Clean the partridges thoroughly.

  2. Season them with mace, allspice, white pepper, and coarse sea salt, rubbing it into every part.

Bake

  1. Lay the partridges breast down in a pan, packing them closely together.

  2. Add a generous amount of butter on top.

  3. Cover the pan with a flour paste and a paper, tying it securely.

  4. Bake in a moderate oven (350°F / 175°C) until cooked through.

Pot and finish

  1. Once cooled, transfer the birds to pots and cover them with more butter.

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. Mace + allspicetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  2. Mace + white peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,695 recipes

    Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).

  3. Allspice + white peppertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together272 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Mace + buttertop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together11,405 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

  5. Allspice + buttertop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,325 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

Mace and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 11,405 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
Provide the main meat, which is cooked gently until tender in the sealed pan.
Butter
Adds fat and moisture, enriching the birds and sealing them from air once potted.

The step that matters

Covering the pan with a flour paste and paper. The sealed cover traps steam and keeps moisture in during baking. If it leaks, the birds can dry out and the surface can overcook before the inside is done.

Swap the white pepper

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

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Clovefits better
  3. Cinnamonfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mace, allspice, 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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