Skip to main content
Main

Partridges

Partridges stewed in a Madeira wine and gravy mixture, garnished with artichoke quarters and hard‑boiled egg yolks.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Ketchup and anchovy match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 479 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Partridges

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the partridges

  1. Truss the partridges as for roasting and stuff the cavities.

  2. Lard each side of the breast with butter mixed with pepper, salt, and beaten mace.

  3. Fill the bellies with the butter mixture and sew up the vents.

  4. Dredge the partridges in flour and fry until light brown.

Stew and serve

  1. Place the partridges in a stew‑pan with gravy, Madeira wine, ketchup, lemon pickle, mushroom powder, anchovy, lemon, and sweet marjoram.

  2. Cover and stew for 30 minutes.

  3. Remove the partridges and thicken the gravy by boiling it slightly.

  4. Pour the thickened gravy over the partridges and garnish with artichoke quarters and hard‑boiled egg yolks.

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. Ketchup + anchovytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together479 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

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

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

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

  4. Pepper + mushroomtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,580 recipes

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

  5. Butter + anchovytop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,697 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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, becoming tender as they stew in the gravy.
Butter
Adds richness and moisture, basting the birds from within as they cook.
Madeira wine
Adds a sweet, aromatic depth that flavours the thickened gravy.
Good gravy
Forms the liquid base that stews the partridges and becomes the sauce.
Hard-boiled egg yolks
Add a rich, crumbly texture and mild flavour as a garnish.

The step that matters

Thickening the gravy by boiling. Boiling only slightly is enough to reduce and thicken the sauce; boiling hard can make it too thick, greasy, or break it, so watch it closely.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, pepper, madeira wine, ketchup, lemon, mushroom, anchovy):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Marjoramfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, pepper, madeira wine, ketchup, lemon, mushroom, anchovy. 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.

You might also like

Lemon SauceLemon Sauce236 recipesMushroom SoupMushroom Soup60 recipesArtichoke SoupArtichoke Soup55 recipesTomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipes