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Stewed Partridges

A stew of young partridges cooked in butter and water, finished 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, moving it constantly to prevent burning.

  4. Cook until the red gravy percolates from the birds and mixes with the melted 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
Form the main body of the dish and supply the meat and juices that become the gravy.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, and melts with the birds' juices to form the finished gravy.

The step that matters

Cook until the red gravy percolates and mixes with the butter. Keep the pot covered and move it often so the butter and juices do not scorch on the base. Stop when the gravy has run from the birds and combined with the butter, since further cooking dries the lean meat.

“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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