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Crepinettes of Partridges, a LA D’estalng

Small partridge meat dumplings flavored with bacon, truffles, and Espagnole sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Crepinettes of Partridges, a LA D’estalng

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Mix the quenelle forcemeat with the diced bacon, truffles, Espagnole sauce, partridge glaze, and cayenne pepper.

  2. Drop tablespoonfuls of the mixture onto a floured surface and shape into egg-like forms.

  3. Wrap each piece in a small piece of pig's caul and flatten slightly.

Fry and serve

  1. Dip in clarified butter and fry in a hot pan until light golden.

  2. Drain on a napkin and arrange in a circle on a serving dish.

  3. Mix partridge glaze with butter and lemon juice, then pour around the crepinette and serve.

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 + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. Truffle + buttertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,209 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  3. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Meat + truffletop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together527 recipes

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

  5. Sauce + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,338 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Quenelle forcemeat
Forms the soft, binding base that holds the filling together inside the caul.
French truffles
Adds a rich, earthy aroma and distinctive flavour to the filling.
Bacon fat
Adds fat and savoury richness, keeping the filling moist during cooking.
Espagnole sauce
Adds body and savoury depth to the filling mixture.
Partridge glaze
Adds concentrated savoury meat flavour to both the filling and the finishing sauce.

The step that matters

Frying the crepinettes in clarified butter. Frying over high heat browns the caul and surface quickly through the Maillard reaction, while clarified butter tolerates the heat without burning. Too low a heat leaves the caul pale and greasy, and too high a heat scorches it before the filling heats through.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Lemonthe original
  2. Avocadofits about as well
  3. Limefits about as well
  4. Coconutfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, truffle, sauce, pepper, flour, 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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