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Partridge Pie in a Dish

A baked pie with partridges, veal, ham, mushrooms, and puff pastry.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and thyme match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,057 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Partridge Pie in a Dish

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the partridges

  1. Pick and singe the partridges. Cut off the legs at the knee.

  2. Season the partridges with pepper, coarse sea salt, parsley, thyme, and mushrooms.

Assemble and bake

  1. Place the veal steak and ham slice at the bottom of a dish.

  2. Add the seasoned partridges and pour in the broth.

  3. Cover the dish with puff pastry, brushing it with beaten egg.

  4. Bake at 400°F (200°C) for one hour.

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. Parsley + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  3. Pepper + thymetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  4. Thyme + mushroomtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  5. Pepper + mushroomtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,580 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Partridges
Form the main filling and provide the dish's central meat flavour.
Veal steak
Adds meaty body and richness to the juices collecting beneath the birds.
Broth
Supplies moisture so the filling stays juicy and forms a sauce during baking.
Puff pastry
Forms a flaky, crisp crust that seals in steam and browns in the oven.
Egg
Brushed on the pastry, it promotes an even golden browning.
Mushrooms
Contribute earthy flavour and moisture to the seasoned filling.

The step that matters

Covering the dish with pastry. The pastry must seal the dish tightly so steam stays inside, keeping the partridge moist while the crust cooks and browns.

Swap the thyme

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pepper, parsley, mushroom, veal, ham, egg):

  1. Thymethe original
  2. Marjoramfits about as well
  3. Tarragonfits less well
  4. Celeryfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, parsley, mushroom, veal, ham, egg. 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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