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Partridges ‘à LA Sybarite’

A stuffed partridge and snipe dish with truffles, livers, beef marrow, and rich gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Truffle and beef work together. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 412 recipes. Both carry 3-ethylphenol, which smells must. The science ↓

Partridges ‘à LA Sybarite’

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the filling

  1. Draw and bone the partridges and snipes.

  2. Peel the truffles and pound the peel with the fried livers. Mix in the beef marrow and season the mixture.

  3. Pass the mixture through a sieve and add diced truffles.

Stuff and wrap

  1. Season the snipes inside and place some mixture in each. Roll up the snipes and insert them into the partridges, filling the crops with remaining mixture.

  2. Truss the partridges, salt them, and wrap in pig's caul.

  3. After 24 hours, skewer the partridges and wrap in buttered paper.

Roast and serve

  1. Roast over a good fire for 20 minutes, then remove the string and serve with reduced gravy.

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. Truffle + beeftop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together412 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-ethylphenol (must).

  2. Truffle + livertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together395 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-nonanal (fatty, waxy).

  3. Liver + beeftop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together431 recipes

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

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 that holds the stuffing and cooks as the centrepiece of the dish.
Snipes
Are boned, stuffed and inserted into the partridges, adding a richer filling inside the bird.
Raw truffles
Add a strong earthy aroma and flavour to the forcemeat and the birds.
Livers of snipes and partridges
Fried and pounded into the forcemeat, giving it a rich, savoury body.
Beef marrow
Adds fat and richness, helping the forcemeat stay moist and smooth.

The step that matters

Roast over a good fire for 20 minutes. Fat in the wrapping and birds renders and bastes the meat, while a hot fire browns the outside. Too little heat leaves the skin pale and the meat soft; too long dries the lean breast.

“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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