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Salad

Partridge Salad

A salad of roast partridge with oil, tarragon vinegar, shallot, lettuce, eggs, gherkins, onions, and capers.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Shallot and capers match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 405 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Partridge Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Dress the partridge

  1. In a deep dish, combine the partridge, oil, tarragon vinegar, minced shallot, salt, and pepper.

Arrange and serve

  1. At serving time, place the partridge in a serving dish.

  2. Surround it with the lettuce hearts.

  3. Garnish with hard boiled eggs, minced gherkins, pickled onions, and capers.

  4. Stir the mixture from the deep dish thoroughly with the partridge.

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. Shallot + caperstop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together405 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Tarragon + shallottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together602 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Tarragon + lettucetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together425 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Tarragon + caperstop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together379 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Partridge
Provides the meat that the dressing coats and the salad is built around.
Oil
Carries flavour and keeps the meat moist and glossy.
Tarragon vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the dressing and cuts the richness of the oil.
Shallot
Adds a mild onion aroma to the dressing.

The step that matters

Stirring the dressing through the partridge. Thorough stirring spreads the oil, vinegar and shallot evenly over the meat, so every piece is seasoned and moistened rather than only the surface.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Mustardfits better
  2. Chivefits better
  3. Beetrootfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against tarragon, vinegar, shallot, pepper, lettuce, egg, 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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