Name: Partridges with Mushrooms
Ingredients: 2 to 3 partridges; ½ pint mushroom buttons or small flaps; 1½ ounces butter; ¼ teaspoon coarse sea salt; ¼ teaspoon cayenne pepper

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 to 3 partridges
½ pint mushroom buttons or small flaps
1½ ounces butter
¼ teaspoon coarse sea salt
¼ teaspoon cayenne pepper

Directions

Prepare the partridges by cleaning and dressing them.
Melt the butter in a pan over low heat.
Add the mushrooms, salt, and cayenne pepper to the pan.
Sauté the mushrooms for 8 to 10 minutes until tender.
Remove the mushrooms and butter from the pan and let them cool.
Once cooled, serve the mushrooms over the partridges.

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).
Mushroom + peppertop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together13,580 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Butter + peppertop 21% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together85,593 recipes

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