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Partridge Au Choux

Partridges cooked with cabbage, onions, carrot, cloves, stock, and bacon, served with gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,873 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Partridge Au Choux

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the pot

  1. Place the salt pork and saveloy in a saucepan.

  2. Add the trussed partridges, small onions, carrot, cloves, bouquet garni, and drained cabbage on top.

Cook

  1. Moisten the birds with 2 ladles of good stock and cover with 2 thin slices of bacon and a buttered paper.

  2. Cook gently for 2 hours at the side of the fire.

Finish and serve

  1. Press the cabbage.

  2. Drain the birds.

  3. Slice the saveloy for garnish.

  4. Thicken the gravy if desired.

  5. Pour the gravy over the birds and cabbage, arranging it nicely.

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. Carrot + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,873 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Onion + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  3. Carrot + cabbagetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,505 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  4. Onion + cabbagetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,001 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  5. Pork + oniontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,214 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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

What each ingredient does

Partridges
Form the main dish, becoming tender and flavoured as they cook gently in stock.
Cabbage
Absorbs flavour from the stock and fat, giving the dish its body and savoury taste.
Salt pork
Renders fat and seasons the stock and cabbage during the long, gentle cook.
Bacon
Lays over the birds, adding smoky, salty fat that bastes them as they cook.
Good stock
Moistens the birds and forms the gravy that carries savour to the whole dish.

The step that matters

Cook gently for 2 hours at the side of the fire. Low, gentle heat keeps the partridge meat tender and moist while collagen slowly softens. A hard boil would toughen the muscle fibres and dry out the lean birds.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pork, onion, carrot, cabbage):

  1. Celeryfits better
  2. Garlicfits better
  3. Thymefits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pork, onion, carrot, cabbage. 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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