Skip to main content
Main

PJiea/ants and Partridges

Roasted partridges served with mutton gravy, lemon pickle, ketchup, and browning, accompanied by bread sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Flour and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

PJiea/ants and Partridges

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare and roast

  1. Prepare the partridges by removing the insides and laying them down.

  2. Dust the birds with flour and baste them often with fresh butter.

  3. Roast the birds at a distance from the fire for about 30 minutes.

Make the gravy

  1. Make gravy by combining mutton gravy, lemon pickle, ketchup, and browning in a saucepan.

  2. Strain the gravy and pour a little into the dish with the birds.

Serve

  1. Serve the partridges with the remaining gravy in one bowl and bread sauce in another.

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. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Flour + ketchuptop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,435 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

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

  4. Butter + muttontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,781 recipes

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

  5. Flour + lemontop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,404 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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 is roasted until cooked through.
Flour
Dusting the birds helps form a light coating that promotes browning.
Fresh butter
Basting adds fat and moisture to the birds and encourages even browning.
Mutton gravy
Forms the savoury liquid base of the sauce, adding meaty flavour and moisture.
Ketchup
Adds sweetness and acidity that give the gravy a tangy, rounded flavour.

The step that matters

Roast at a distance from the fire. Roasting away from direct, intense heat cooks the birds through gently, so the outside does not burn before the inside is done.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, butter, mutton, ketchup. 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.

You might also like

Mutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipesLemon SauceLemon Sauce236 recipesHaricot MuttonHaricot Mutton59 recipesMutton SoupMutton Soup56 recipes