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To Stew Partridges

A stew of partridges with bacon, herbs, and a thickened sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 19 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and thyme match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,057 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

To Stew Partridges

Ingredients

Directions

Stuff the birds

  1. Truss the partridges as you would for boiling.

  2. Pound the livers with double the amount of fat bacon and bread crumbs boiled in milk.

  3. Add chopped parsley, thyme, shallots, mushrooms, pepper, salt, lemon peel, and mace to the mixture.

  4. Stuff the birds, tie them at both ends, and place them in a stew‑pan lined with bacon slices.

Stew

  1. Add stock, white wine, onions, sweet herbs, and mace to the pan.

  2. Stew gently until tender.

Finish the sauce

  1. Remove the birds, strain the sauce, and thicken it with flour and butter.

  2. Heat the sauce and pour it over the partridges.

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. Parsley + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Parsley + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

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

  3. Thyme + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,973 recipes

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

  4. Parsley + shallottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,737 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  5. Thyme + shallottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,476 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

What each ingredient does

Partridges
The main meat, cooked whole until tender in the stew liquid.
Bread crumbs
Soaked in milk, they bind the stuffing and help keep it moist.
Fat bacon
Adds fat and savour to the lean game meat and its stuffing.
White wine
Adds acidity and flavour to the stewing liquid.
Flour
Thickens the strained sauce as it heats, giving it body.

The step that matters

Thicken the sauce with flour and butter. Flour must be fully mixed in and heated so its starch swells and thickens the sauce smoothly without lumps or a raw floury taste. Adding it to hot liquid unmixed is what causes lumps.

Swap the shallot

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (bread, milk, parsley, thyme, mushroom, pepper, lemon):

  1. Shallotthe original
  2. Carrotfits about as well
  3. Capsicumfits less well
  4. Spinachfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, milk, parsley, thyme, mushroom, pepper, lemon. 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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