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Partridges, Roast

Roasted partridges seasoned with salt, pepper, mace, and bacon, served with gravy and bread sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and mace are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 16% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 12,257 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Partridges, Roast

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Pluck, singe, and draw the partridges, then clean them thoroughly inside and out.

  2. Bring the head around and place it in the left wing, with the bill on the breast.

  3. Draw the legs close to the breast and truss the birds securely with string.

  4. Cover the breast with thin slices of fat bacon.

Roast

  1. Place the birds before a clear fire and baste well.

  2. Cook for 30 to 40 minutes.

  3. Flour the birds towards the end of cooking to help them brown.

Serve

  1. Serve on fried bread crumbs, buttered toast, or a hot dish garnished with watercress, with brown gravy and bread sauce.

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 + macetop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,257 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Mace + vealtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,761 recipes

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

  3. Pepper + vealtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,049 recipes

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

  4. Veal + eggtop 28% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,845 recipes

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

  5. Pepper + eggtop 33% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together50,580 recipes

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

Pepper and mace barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 12,257 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
Main protein; roasting cooks the lean meat while the bacon keeps it moist.
Fat bacon
Lays over the breast to baste the lean meat with melting fat as it roasts.
Powdered mace
Adds a warm, aromatic spice flavour to the dish.
Veal stock
Forms the base of the brown gravy, adding savoury depth.
Beaten egg
Binds and helps seal the coating applied to the birds.

The step that matters

Flour the birds towards the end of cooking. Flour dusted on late in roasting reacts with heat and fat to form a golden, browned crust. Added too early it can scorch before the birds are cooked through.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pepper, veal, egg):

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Sagefits better
  3. Tarragonfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, veal, egg. 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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