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Partridges Forced with Tarragon

Partridges stuffed with veal farce, stewed until tender, served with tarragon sauce and fresh tarragon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Tarragon and sauce work together. They rank in the top 17% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 566 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Partridges Forced with Tarragon

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the partridges

  1. Stuff the crops of the partridges with veal farce.

Stew and serve

  1. Stew the partridges gently and covered until very tender.

  2. Drain the cooking liquid and place the partridges on a dish.

  3. Blanch the strong tarragon and add it to the sauce.

  4. Pour tarragon sauce 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. Tarragon + saucetop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together566 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Veal + tarragontop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together217 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Veal + saucetop 27% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,072 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanoic acid (soapy, waxy).

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 becomes very tender through slow, covered stewing.
Veal farce
Adds moisture and richness to the birds as they cook from within.
Tarragon sauce
Carries the tarragon flavour and moistens the partridges when poured over them.
Strong tarragon
Contributes a sharp, aromatic anise flavour to the sauce.

The step that matters

Stew the partridges gently and covered until very tender. Low, gentle heat with a lid breaks down connective tissue slowly, so the meat becomes tender without drying out. Boiling hard toughens muscle fibres and can leave the birds dry and stringy.

Swap the tarragon

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

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Tarragonthe original
  3. Parsleyfits about as well
  4. Sagefits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, 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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