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Braised Partridges

Braised partridges with bacon, sweet herbs, wine, ham, garlic, and Spanish red pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,451 recipes. Both carry ethyl octanoate, which smells fruity, wine. The science ↓

Braised Partridges

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare and brown

  1. Singe, draw, and truss the partridges as for boiling.

  2. Fry the partridges with the bacon and sweet herbs in a stewpan until nicely colored.

Braise

  1. Pour in the wine, cover with a lid, and let them braise gently with hot ashes on top.

  2. Add the diced ham.

  3. Add the boiled garlic cloves.

  4. Sprinkle with Spanish red pepper.

  5. Continue cooking for about 15 minutes.

Finish and serve

  1. Remove the partridges and drain them.

  2. Remove the strings.

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. Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  2. Garlic + peppertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,090 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  3. Clove + garlictop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,368 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

  4. Wine + garlictop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together5,790 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  5. Wine + clovetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,958 recipes

    Shared aroma: cis-isoeugenol (clove, spicy).

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

What each ingredient does

Partridges
The main meat, which becomes tender as it braises slowly in liquid.
Bacon
Adds rendered fat and savory flavor that helps the partridges brown.
Wine
Forms the braising liquid, adding moisture and a light acidity to the sauce.
Garlic
Boiling softens its sharpness, leaving a mellow, aromatic flavor.
Ham
Contributes salty, savory flavor that seasons the braising liquid.
Sweet herbs
Add aromatic flavor to the fat used for frying the partridges.

The step that matters

Braise gently with the lid on. Lean game meat dries out and toughens when cooked too hot or too fast. A gentle, covered braise keeps moisture in and lets connective tissue soften slowly.

Swap the garlic

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (wine, clove, ham, pepper):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Allspicefits better
  3. Rosemaryfits better
  4. Garlicthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against wine, clove, ham, 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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