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Partridge Soup

A hearty soup made from partridges, ham, celery, onions, mutton shanks, and butter, simmered in boiling water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Celery and onion are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 18,518 recipes. Both carry guaiacol, which smells smoky, sweet. The science ↓

Partridge Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Remove the skin and cut the partridges into pieces.

  2. Slice the ham, celery, and onions.

Make the soup

  1. Fry all ingredients in butter until browned, being careful not to burn them.

  2. Transfer to a stew-pan and add boiling water, peppercorns, mutton shanks, and salt.

  3. Stew gently for 2 hours.

  4. Strain through a sieve and return to the stew-pan.

  5. Add stewed celery and fried bread, and heat until near boiling.

  6. Skim the surface, pour into a tureen, and 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. Celery + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,518 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  2. Ham + muttontop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together430 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  3. Onion + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Ham + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,475 recipes

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

  5. Butter + muttontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,781 recipes

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

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 flavour and body of the broth as they simmer.
Mutton shanks
Release collagen and gelatin during stewing, giving the broth richness and body.
Onions
Browning in butter builds sweet, savoury depth in the base of the soup.
Ham
Adds salty, smoky meat flavour that seasons the broth.
Butter
Fat for frying that browns the vegetables and meats, adding roasted flavour.

The step that matters

Fry all ingredients in butter until browned. Browning builds the deep savoury flavour of the stock through the Maillard reaction. Burnt pieces turn bitter and will taint the whole pot, so heat must stay moderate and the pieces should be stirred.

Swap the celery

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (ham, onion, butter, mutton):

  1. Garlicfits better
  2. Capersfits about as well
  3. Parsleyfits about as well
  4. Celerythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against ham, onion, butter, mutton. 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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