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Bolled Partridges

Boiled partridges served with butter, lemon juice, and cayenne pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and pepper 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 ↓

Bolled Partridges

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Remove feathers, clean, and wash the partridges thoroughly.

  2. Cut off the heads and truss them like boiled fowls.

Boil and serve

  1. Drop the partridges into a large pan of boiling water and add a little salt.

  2. Boil for 15 to 18 minutes until ready to serve.

  3. Lift them out, dish them quickly, and serve with a slice of butter, lemon juice, and a sprinkle of cayenne in a hot dish.

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. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  2. Lemon + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

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

  3. Pepper + buttertop 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 lean meat the dish is built around; gentle boiling keeps it moist and tender.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, which carries flavour and softens the lean meat when served.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich, gamey flavour of the birds.

The step that matters

Boiling time. Partridges are lean, so boiling them past the stated 15 to 18 minutes can make the meat dry and tough. Timing the boil and serving promptly keeps the flesh juicy and tender.

“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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