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Partridge Soup

A soup made with butter, sugar, turnips, stock, and roasted partridges.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 17% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 98,233 recipes. Both carry guaiacol, which smells smoky, sweet. The science ↓

Partridge Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the soup base

  1. Melt the butter in a large pan.

  2. Add the crushed sugar and stir over heat until the butter and sugar begin to brown.

  3. Add the minced turnips and stir until they release moisture.

  4. Cover the pan and boil slowly, then add stock to desired consistency.

Finish and serve

  1. Roast the partridges and cut them into pieces.

  2. Add the partridge pieces to the soup and serve in a tureen.

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. Butter + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  2. Butter + turniptop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,100 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Sugar + turniptop 29% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,330 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Adds richness and fat, and browns with the sugar to build flavour.
Crushed sugar
Browns with the butter, adding sweetness and caramel notes.
Minced turnips
Form the body of the soup, softening and releasing moisture as they cook.
Partridges
Provide the main meat, added as roasted pieces to the finished soup.

The step that matters

Browning the butter and sugar. Stirring over heat until the butter and sugar just begin to brown builds flavour, but going too far makes the mixture bitter and dark. Watching closely prevents scorching.

Swap the turnip

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

  1. Sweet potatofits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Potatofits better
  4. Turnipthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, sugar. 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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