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Broiled Partridge

A whole partridge seasoned, coated, and broiled, served with optional gravy, mushrooms, or butter and lemon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Broiled Partridge

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the partridge down the back and break the merrythought to flatten it. Remove the feet at the joint and skewer the bird as you would a fowl.

Coat and broil

  1. Dry the partridge, dust it with flour, dip it in beaten egg, and sprinkle it with chopped herbs and seasoned bread crumbs. Broil the partridge until cooked through.

Serve

  1. Serve with a little good gravy and chopped mushrooms, or omit the egg and crumbs. If serving plain, baste with butter, season with salt and pepper, and squeeze half a lemon over it before serving.

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. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  2. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  3. Butter + mushroomtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

  4. Bread + mushroomtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,536 recipes

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

  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

Partridge
Is the main protein, which cooks through under the broiler and forms the dish.
Egg
Binds the flour and crumb coating so the herbs and crumbs adhere to the bird.
Bread crumbs
Form a crisp, browned outer layer when broiled.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, and helps the surface brown when basted.
Lemon
Adds acidity that brightens the rich flavour of the game bird.

The step that matters

Broil the partridge until cooked through. Lean game birds dry out quickly under direct heat, so the bird should be checked for doneness rather than left to a fixed time, and basted to keep the surface moist while it browns.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (flour, egg, bread, pepper, butter, mushroom):

  1. Lemonthe original
  2. Figfits about as well
  3. Plumfits less well
  4. Cherryfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, egg, bread, pepper, butter, mushroom. 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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