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To Boast Partridges

A roasted partridge served with bread sauce, brown gravy, and optional fried bread crumbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 Boast Partridges

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Hang the partridges until they are just about to spoil.

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

  3. Wipe the insides thoroughly with a clean cloth.

  4. Truss the partridges with the head under the wing and legs close together or crossed.

Roast and serve

  1. Flour the birds when you first place them on the fire.

  2. Baste them generously with butter.

  3. Serve with bread sauce and good brown gravy poured over the partridges.

  4. Optionally, serve fried bread crumbs on the side.

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. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Butter + saucetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,338 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Flour + saucetop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,078 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Bread + saucetop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,934 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Partridges
The main meat; roasting cooks it through while its skin crisps and browns.
Butter
Basting fat that carries heat over the skin, promoting browning and adding richness and moisture.
Flour
Dusted on the birds at the start, it helps form a browned crust on the skin.

The step that matters

Basting with butter. Butter spooned over the birds during roasting keeps the lean meat moist and helps the skin brown evenly. Basting too little can leave the breast dry and the skin pale.

“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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