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Pate-chaud of Young Partridges, a LA Chasseur

A hot pâté made from young partridges cooked with clarified butter, Madeira, truffles, mushrooms, and brown sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Truffle and mushroom are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,900 recipes. Both carry 2,4-nonadienal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Pate-chaud of Young Partridges, a LA Chasseur

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the partridges

  1. Draw and singe the partridges, then cut them into small joints: remove legs and wings, cut fillets with pinion-hone, and leave the breast-piece and hack intact.

  2. Trim all pieces neatly, rolling the skin of the thighs under for plumpness.

Cook and braise

  1. Place the joints in a deep sauté pan with clarified butter, season with pepper, salt, and nutmeg, and fry until brown over a brisk fire.

  2. Add Madeira or sherry, glaze, truffles, and mushrooms, cover with a lid containing live embers, and simmer gently for 15 minutes.

  3. Remove the lid, add brown Italian sauce, boil for 3 minutes, then stir in lemon juice and parsley.

Garnish and serve

  1. Garnish the pie with the partridges, reserving truffles and mushrooms for the top, pour over the sauce, 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. Truffle + mushroomtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,900 recipes

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

  2. Nutmeg + walnuttop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,230 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Sherry + mushroomtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,176 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methoxy-4-methylphenol (smoky, clove).

  4. Butter + mushroomtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

  5. Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Young partridges
Provide the main meat, whose firm flesh holds its shape through frying and simmering.
Clarified butter
Fat for frying that browns the joints evenly at high heat without burning.
Truffles
Add a deep, earthy aroma that perfumes the sauce and the finished dish.
Button mushrooms
Add savoury body and absorb the flavour of the wine and sauce.
Madeira or sherry
Adds acidity and sweetness, deglazing the pan and building the sauce's depth.
Brown italian sauce
Provides a rich, thick base that coats the meat and gives the sauce its body.

The step that matters

Browning the joints over a brisk fire. Browning creates the Maillard flavours that give the meat and sauce their depth. Too little heat steams the pieces instead, leaving them pale and bland before the simmer.

Swap the walnut

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, pepper, nutmeg, sherry, truffle, scallop, mushroom):

  1. Walnutthe original
  2. Beansfits about as well
  3. Peasfits about as well
  4. Almondfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, pepper, nutmeg, sherry, truffle, scallop, mushroom. 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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