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To Broil Partridge

A partridge split and broiled, seasoned with pepper, salt, butter, and served with a sauce of stock, flour, butter, ketchup, and lemon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon 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 ↓

To Broil Partridge

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Split the partridge and wipe it, but do not wash it.

Broil and season

  1. Broil the partridge until it is a pale brown.

  2. Sprinkle with pepper and salt, then rub a little butter over it immediately after removing from the fire.

  3. Optionally, dip the partridge in clarified butter and breadcrumbs before broiling.

Make the sauce

  1. Make a sauce by thickening meat stock or water with flour and butter, and flavor with salt, pepper, ketchup, and a squeeze of lemon.

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 + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  2. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + ketchuptop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,435 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

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

  5. Butter + meattop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,594 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Partridge
Is the main protein, cooked by broiling to brown the surface and set the meat.
Flour
Thickens the stock or water into a sauce by swelling with heat.
Butter
Adds richness and helps the surface brown when rubbed on the hot bird.
Lemon
Adds acidity that brightens the flavor of the sauce.

The step that matters

Rub the butter on immediately after removing from the fire. Hot meat absorbs melted butter and seasoning best while the surface is still hot, so the butter spreads evenly and adds moisture and flavor before the bird cools.

“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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