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Fillets of Partridges En Attelets

Partridge fillets, livers, and mushrooms marinated and fried, served with a tarragon vinegar and butter sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 17 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,053 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Fillets of Partridges En Attelets

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Remove the fillets from the partridges and cut them into pieces.

  2. Prepare a marinade with vinegar, water, carrot, onion, parsley, peppercorns, salt, garlic, and bay leaf in a basin.

  3. Add the fillets, chicken livers, and mushrooms to the marinade and let them soak for 8 hours.

Fry and serve

  1. Heat plenty of lard in a pan over high heat.

  2. Fry the partridge fillets first, then the livers, and finally the mushrooms, placing them on paper to drain.

  3. Arrange the fried items neatly on a serving dish.

Make the sauce

  1. For the sauce, reduce the tarragon vinegar to 1 tablespoon, then add butter sauce, glaze, and lemon juice.

  2. Heat the sauce and pour it between the fillets without covering them.

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. Carrot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

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

  2. Onion + garlictop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together29,058 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  3. Parsley + garlictop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,308 recipes

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

  4. Carrot + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,873 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  5. Carrot + oniontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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

What each ingredient does

Partridge fillets
Provide the main meat, which is browned in hot fat and holds its shape when fried.
Vinegar
Acidity in the marinade tenderises the meat and balances the rich flavour.
Chicken livers
Add a rich, soft texture and deep savoury flavour to the dish.
Mushrooms
Add moisture and earthy flavour, and brown well in hot fat.
Tarragon vinegar
Reduced to concentrate its sharp, aromatic tarragon flavour for the sauce.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich butter sauce.

The step that matters

Frying in hot lard. Lard must be very hot before the fillets go in, so the surface browns quickly and seals in juices instead of steaming and turning greasy. Frying in the listed order keeps each item at its best.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (vinegar, carrot, onion, parsley, garlic, chicken, liver):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Cuminfits better
  3. Marjoramfits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against vinegar, carrot, onion, parsley, garlic, chicken, liver. 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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