Name: Partridges with Mushrooms
Ingredients: 2 partridges; ½ to ¾ pint mushroom buttons or very small flaps; 1½ ounces butter; salt to taste; cayenne to taste; optional: brown mushroom sauce, gravy, or bread sauce

Why it works: Mushroom and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 12,525 recipes. Both carry trans-2-decenal, which smells waxy, orange. The science ↓

Partridges with Mushrooms

Ingredients

2 partridges
½ to ¾ pint mushroom buttons or very small flaps
1½ ounces butter
salt to taste
cayenne to taste
optional: brown mushroom sauce, gravy, or bread sauce

Directions

Prepare the stuffing

Prepare the mushrooms by cleaning them and cutting any larger ones into smaller pieces.
Melt the butter in a pan over low heat, then add the mushrooms, salt, and cayenne.
Simmer the mushrooms for 8 to 10 minutes, then remove from heat and let cool.

Roast and serve

Stuff the cooled mushrooms into the bodies of the partridges and sew them up securely.
Truss the partridges and roast them on a spit or vertical jack for 30 to 40 minutes.
Serve with brown mushroom sauce, gravy, or bread sauce.

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.

Mushroom + buttertop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together12,525 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Partridges: Form the main body of the dish, carrying the stuffing as they roast.
Mushroom buttons or flaps: Form the stuffing, softening and releasing moisture as they simmer in butter.
Butter: Carries the cooking of the mushrooms and adds richness and flavour.

“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.