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Modern Cookery

Partridges cooked and served with a brown mushroom sauce thickened with butter and arrowroot.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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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 and roast

  1. Sew the partridges up.

  2. Truss them securely.

  3. Roast them on a vertical jack with the heads down.

  4. Tie them to a spit.

  5. Roast for 30 to 40 minutes.

Stew and brown

  1. Stew for 1 hour.

  2. Flour the birds.

  3. Brown them lightly in butter.

  4. Cover with rich brown gravy.

  5. Simmer for 30 minutes, turning the birds.

Finish and serve

  1. Add mushrooms to the gravy.

  2. Simmer for another 30 minutes.

  3. Serve with brown mushroom sauce.

  4. Thicken the sauce with butter and arrowroot.

  5. Add cayenne and catsup or wine.

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

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

  5. Mushroom + macetop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,529 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

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 becomes tender through long, slow stewing in gravy.
Mushrooms
Add earthy flavour and soft texture to the gravy.
Butter
Browns the floured birds and adds richness to the sauce.
Arrowroot
Starch that thickens the sauce to a glossy, smooth consistency when heated.
Mace
Adds a warm, aromatic spice flavour to the sauce.

The step that matters

Thickening the sauce with arrowroot. Arrowroot is a starch that thickens when heated, but it thins if it is boiled hard or held at a rolling boil for long. Stir it in near the end and keep the sauce at a gentle simmer so it sets smooth rather than loose or slimy.

Swap the mace

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

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

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

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