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To Roast Partridges

Roasted partridges seasoned with butter, coarse sea salt, cayenne pepper, and optional eschalot, herbs, or fried bread-crumbs, served with a gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

To Roast Partridges

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the birds

  1. Hang the partridges until they can be kept without becoming offensive.

  2. Carefully pick, draw, and singe the birds.

  3. Wipe the insides thoroughly with a clean cloth.

  4. Truss the birds with the head under the wing and legs drawn close together.

Roast

  1. Flour the birds when first laid to the fire and baste them plentifully with butter.

  2. Roast for 30 to 40 minutes, adjusting time for desired doneness.

Make the gravy

  1. For gravy, bruise remains of a cold roasted partridge and boil down with enough water or broth.

  2. Season the gravy with coarse sea salt, cayenne, and optional eschalot and herbs.

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. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  2. Pepper + breadtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,964 recipes

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

  3. Butter + peppertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

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

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 cooked whole and trussed for even roasting.
Butter
Bastes the birds, adding richness and promoting gentle browning and moisture in the skin.

The step that matters

Roast for 30 to 40 minutes, adjusting time for desired doneness. Partridge is lean and cooks quickly, so overcooking dries the meat. Basting with butter adds fat that helps keep the surface moist and golden while the interior sets.

“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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