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Boiled Partridges

A dish of partridges boiled in water, served with mushroom or celery sauce, optionally browned in butter and simmered in gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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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 ↓

Boiled Partridges

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare and boil

  1. Truss the partridges securely and place them in boiling water.

  2. Boil for 15 to 18 minutes until cooked through.

Serve

  1. Remove from water and serve with white mushroom sauce or celery sauce.

  2. For a richer dish, brown the partridges in butter and cover with gravy, simmering for 30 minutes.

  3. Add mushrooms to the gravy and serve hot.

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. Mushroom + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

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

  2. Mushroom + macetop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,529 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  3. Butter + macetop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together11,405 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

Butter and mace barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 11,405 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
Form the main body of the dish, cooked through by boiling.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, and helps the partridges brown in the richer version.
Mushrooms
Add earthy flavour and moisture when cooked into the gravy.

The step that matters

Boil for 15 to 18 minutes until cooked through. Boiling for too long toughens the meat and dries it out, while too short a time leaves it underdone. Checking that the meat is cooked through by the end of the time matters for safety, so the cook should confirm doneness rather than rely on the clock alone.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (mushroom, butter):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against mushroom, butter. 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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