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Partridge Pie a LA Francaise

A pie filled with partridges and forcemeat of veal, bacon, butter, shallots, parsley, and thyme, topped with bacon slices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 ↓

Partridge Pie a LA Francaise

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the forcemeat

  1. Season the partridges well.

  2. Combine veal, fat bacon, butter, shallots, parsley, and thyme in a stewpan and cook the mixture until tender.

  3. Strain the mixture, then pound the strained meat until smooth.

Assemble the pie

  1. Prepare a pie crust and place the partridges inside it.

  2. Spread the forcemeat over the partridges and top with thin slices of bacon.

  3. Cover the pie with a thick lid and seal it well to prevent gravy from leaking.

Bake

  1. Bake in a 300°F (150°C) oven for 3 hours, ensuring the oven is not too 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. Parsley + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Shallot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,737 recipes

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

  3. Shallot + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,476 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Butter + parsleytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together28,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  5. Butter + shallottop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,426 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
Form the main meat of the pie, cooking gently within the crust.
Veal
Provides the bulk of the forcemeat, giving it a tender, sliceable body once pounded.
Fat bacon
Adds fat and moisture to the forcemeat, keeping the meat from drying out.
Butter
Enriches the forcemeat with fat, adding richness and a smooth texture.
Shallots
Add a mild, aromatic onion-like flavour to the forcemeat.

The step that matters

Seal the lid well. A tight seal traps steam and juices inside during the long, gentle bake. A leaking lid lets gravy escape, so the partridges can dry out and the filling loses moisture.

Swap the shallot

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

  1. Shallotthe original
  2. Carrotfits about as well
  3. Leekfits about as well
  4. Parsnipfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, butter, parsley, thyme. 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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