Skip to main content
Main

Modern Cookery

Partridges served with brown mushroom sauce or gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Mushroom and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 12,525 recipes. Both carry trans-2-decenal, which smells waxy, orange. The science ↓

Modern Cookery

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Prepare the partridges by sewing them up and trussing them securely.

Cook

  1. Roast them on a vertical jack with the heads downwards, or tie them firmly to an ordinary spit.

  2. Roast for 30 to 40 minutes, or stew for 1 hour.

Make the sauce and serve

  1. For a sauce, mix fresh butter with arrowroot, and flavor with cayenne and catsup, wine, or store sauce.

  2. Serve the partridges with brown mushroom sauce or gravy.

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. Mushroom + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

  2. Mushroom + winetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,632 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methoxy-4-propylphenol (allspice, anise).

  3. Mushroom + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,580 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  4. Mushroom + arrowroottop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Butter + winetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,645 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

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

What each ingredient does

Partridges
Form the main protein that the cooking method must cook through without drying out.
Mushrooms
Add earthy flavor and savoury depth to the brown sauce.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, glossy mouthfeel to the sauce.
Arrowroot
Thickens the sauce into a smooth, clear-looking body without clouding it.

The step that matters

Roast for 30 to 40 minutes, or stew for 1 hour. Partridge is lean, so overcooking dries the meat quickly. Holding the time within the stated range, and keeping the birds trussed so they cook evenly, helps the meat stay moist while the centre cooks through.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (mushroom, butter, arrowroot, pepper, wine):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Tarragonfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mushroom, butter, arrowroot, pepper, wine. 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.

You might also like

Mushroom SoupMushroom Soup60 recipesArrowroot GruelArrowroot Gruel37 recipesTomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipes