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Salmis of Partridge a l’Ancienne

A partridge stew with stock, shallots, lemon peel, and reduced Spanish sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Shallot and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,523 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Salmis of Partridge a l’Ancienne

Ingredients

Directions

Roast and cut

  1. Lard and roast the partridges until underdone, then let them cool.

  2. Cut the partridges into pieces, removing the skin and trimming them nicely.

Make the sauce

  1. In a stewpan, combine the partridge pieces with stock, shallots, lemon peel, and reduced Spanish sauce.

  2. Stew gently until the liquid reduces to half its original quantity.

  3. Remove the partridge pieces and strain the sauce through a fine sieve.

  4. Pound the trimmings in a mortar, moistening with a few drops of the sauce.

  5. Rub the pounded mixture through a fine sieve into a stewpan.

Serve

  1. Add the partridge pieces and warm in a bain-marie.

  2. Arrange the partridge pieces on a hot dish with fried croutons of bread between them.

  3. Pour the sauce around the pieces.

  4. Serve hot.

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. Shallot + lemontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,523 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  2. Shallot + saucetop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,303 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Lemon + saucetop 30% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,598 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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 roasted briefly and then gently stewed in the sauce.
Stock
Forms the liquid base that stews the partridge and concentrates into the sauce.
Reduced spanish sauce
Adds body and depth of flavour, thickening the sauce as it reduces.
Shallots
Contribute a mild savoury aroma to the stewing liquid.

The step that matters

Stew gently until the liquid reduces to half. Gentle heat lets the stock and sauce concentrate slowly, building body and flavour without toughening the partridge. Boiling too hard can make the meat dry and the sauce cloudy.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (shallot, sauce):

  1. Avocadofits better
  2. Limefits better
  3. Lemonthe original
  4. Raisinfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against shallot, sauce. 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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