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Stewed Partridges

Stewed partridges cooked with butter and water, served hot with cayenne pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 21% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 85,593 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Stewed Partridges

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Place the cleaned partridges in a deep cooking pot.

  2. Add butter and a little water.

  3. Cook on a brisk fire with the pot covered, stirring constantly to prevent burning.

  4. Cook until the red gravy percolates from the birds and mixes with the butter.

  5. Serve hot with cayenne pepper and a sauce cruet.

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 + peppertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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 cooks in its own juices and gravy.
Butter
Adds fat and richness to the gravy and helps keep the birds from sticking.

The step that matters

Stirring while the pot cooks covered. Covered cooking on a brisk fire traps moisture, but the butter and juices can scorch on the base of the pot. Constant stirring spreads the liquid and prevents burning, keeping the gravy smooth and tasting clean.

“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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