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Partridges or Pheasants Au Ciioux

Partridges or pheasants braised in stock with savoy cabbage, served with a thickened sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 ↓

Partridges or Pheasants Au Ciioux

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the birds

  1. Stuff the birds with well-seasoned light forcemeat and sew them up.

  2. Blanch and dry the birds, then braise them in 1 pint of stock until tender.

Cook the savoys

  1. Cut the savoys into quarters and boil until a quarter cooked, then squeeze and tie with twine.

  2. Place the savoys in a stewpan, add 1 pint of stock, and boil gently until done.

  3. Remove the savoys, cut off the strings, and place the birds in the center of a dish with the savoys around them.

  4. Cover the dish and keep it warm in the oven.

Make the sauce and serve

  1. Mix the cooking liquids, season with salt, pepper, and lemon juice, and thicken with flour and water.

  2. Boil the sauce until reduced by three-quarters, add color, and strain.

  3. Before serving, glaze the birds' breasts lightly and pour the sauce over the savoys.

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. Cabbage + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,081 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  3. Cabbage + lemontop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together397 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  4. Pheasant + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together225 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetaldehyde (pungent, ethereal).

  5. Pheasant + cabbagetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16 recipes

    Shared aroma: geraniol (rose, geranium).

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

What each ingredient does

Partridges or pheasants
Provide the main meat, which becomes tender through slow braising in stock.
Savoy cabbages
Provide the bulk of the dish and absorb flavour from the cooking liquids.
Stock
Gives the birds and cabbage moisture and savoury depth during braising and boiling.
Flour
Thickens the reduced cooking liquids into a sauce with body.

The step that matters

Boil the sauce until reduced by three-quarters. Reducing concentrates the flavour of the cooking liquids and thickens the sauce; under-reducing leaves it thin and weak, while over-boiling can make it too salty or sticky.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pheasant, cabbage, pepper, flour):

  1. Lemonthe original
  2. Limefits about as well
  3. Avocadofits less well
  4. Plumfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against pheasant, cabbage, pepper, flour. 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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