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Salmis of Partridges, a LA Perigord

A French dish of partridges served with truffle purée, croutons, and sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Sauce and anchovy are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,057 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Salmis of Partridges, a LA Perigord

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Prepare the partridges as directed.

  2. Chop the trimmings and use them to make the sauce.

  3. Cut out 12 small heart-shaped croutons of bread about ¼ inch thick.

  4. Make an incision around the inside edges of the croutons.

  5. Fry the croutons in butter.

  6. Empty the croutons.

  7. Fill the cavities with purée of truffles.

Assemble and serve

  1. Warm the salmis with a little of the sauce and dish it up to form a well in the center.

  2. Place 6 croutons around the top of the entrée.

  3. Fill the center with small quenelles of partridges.

  4. Pour the sauce over the salmis.

  5. Garnish the base with the remaining croutons and serve.

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. Sauce + anchovytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. White wine + buttertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,083 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  4. Anchovy + breadtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,260 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanol (green, fruity).

  5. White wine + lemontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,832 recipes

    Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).

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, cooked and shaped into small quenelles for the centre.
French white wine
Adds acidity and aromatic depth to the sauce base.
Good consommé
Adds savoury liquid that moistens and flavours the sauce.
Espagnole sauce
Forms the rich brown sauce that coats and binds the salmis.
Purée of truffles
Adds a concentrated earthy aroma to the croutons.

The step that matters

Frying the croutons in butter. Butter browns quickly and can burn before the bread is evenly golden and crisp, so heat must be moderate and the croutons watched closely.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (white wine, sauce, anchovy, butter, bread, truffle):

  1. Lemonthe original
  2. Plumfits about as well
  3. Applefits about as well
  4. Red currantfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against white wine, sauce, anchovy, butter, bread, truffle. 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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