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Partridges Stewed

Stewed partridges with bacon, butter, cabbage, and gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Cabbage and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,081 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Partridges Stewed

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Truss the partridges with wings over the back and legs skewered.

  2. In a stewpan, fry the bacon and butter until brown, then add the partridges, ensuring the bacon covers the breasts, and brown them well.

Make the cabbage

  1. Add the gravy and boil the cabbage until ready.

  2. Chop the cabbage and mix with pepper, salt, and a lump of butter.

Stew and serve

  1. Add the cabbage mixture to the partridges and stew slowly for 1 hour, turning often.

  2. When serving, place the bacon in the center of the dish, lay the partridges on top, and create a wall of cabbage around them.

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. Cabbage + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,081 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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

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

  3. Butter + cabbagetop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,397 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

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

What each ingredient does

Partridges
Form the main dish; slow stewing keeps the meat tender and moist.
Bacon
Adds savoury fat and flavour as it browns, and its fat carries flavour into the pan.
Butter
Browns the bacon and partridges and adds rich flavour to the base.
Cabbage
Soaks up the gravy and cooking juices, becoming soft, savoury and moist during stewing.
Gravy
Provides liquid for slow stewing, carrying flavour and keeping the meat moist.

The step that matters

Browning the partridges well. Browning builds deep savoury flavour through the Maillard reaction. Pale searing gives a flatter, less rich stew, so the birds need real colour before the liquid goes in.

Swap the cabbage

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Potatofits better
  3. Carrotfits about as well
  4. Cabbagethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, pepper. 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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