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Salad

Salade De Perdreau

A salad of roast partridge, lettuce, celery, mayonnaise, and garnishes.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Lettuce and capers match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 372 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Salade De Perdreau

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the partridge

  1. Cut the partridge into neat joints, removing the skin and most bones.

  2. Place the meat in a dish.

  3. Season the meat with pepper and salt.

  4. Pour the vinaigrette over the meat.

  5. Refrigerate for about an hour.

Prepare the vegetables

  1. Wash the lettuce and celery.

  2. Remove the green leaves from the celery.

  3. Shred the white portion of the celery.

  4. Season the shredded vegetables lightly.

Assemble and serve

  1. Layer the lettuce, celery, and partridge in a salad bowl in the shape of a dome.

  2. Mask the salad with stiff mayonnaise.

  3. Decorate the salad with slices of gherkin and truffle.

  4. Garnish the salad with quartered hard-boiled eggs, French olives, and capers.

  5. Serve the salad.

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. Lettuce + caperstop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together372 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Olive + caperstop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,688 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Lettuce + celerytop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,033 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  4. Celery + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  5. Lettuce + olivetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,580 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Partridge
Provides the main cooked meat, marinated in vinaigrette so it stays flavourful and moist.
Lettuce
Forms the crisp base layer that gives the dome its structure and fresh texture.
Celery
Adds a crunchy texture and fresh, slightly salty flavour to the shredded layer.
Mayonnaise dressing
Coats the salad with a rich, creamy fat that binds and moistens the layers.
Hard-boiled egg
Adds soft, rich body and a mild savoury flavour as a garnish.
Truffle
Contributes a strong, earthy aroma that gives the salad its distinctive scent.

The step that matters

Refrigerate the partridge in vinaigrette. Chilling lets the acid and oil of the vinaigrette slowly penetrate the meat, so skipping or shortening the rest leaves the flavour sitting on the surface.

Swap the celery

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lettuce, egg, truffle, vinegar, pepper, olive, capers):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against lettuce, egg, truffle, vinegar, pepper, olive, capers. 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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