Skip to main content
Main

To Roast Partridges

Roasted partridges served with bread sauce and brown gravy.

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

Why it works: Butter and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

To Roast Partridges

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the birds

  1. Hang the partridges until they are ready to cook, ensuring they do not become offended.

  2. Carefully pick, draw, and singe the birds.

  3. Wipe the insides thoroughly with a clean cloth.

  4. Truss the partridges with the head turned under the wing and the legs drawn close together or crossed.

Roast and serve

  1. Dust the birds with flour when placing them over the fire.

  2. Baste the partridges generously with butter while roasting.

  3. Serve with bread sauce and pour a little brown gravy over them.

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. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Butter + saucetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,338 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Flour + saucetop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,078 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Bread + saucetop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,934 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

Flour and butter 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

Partridges
The main protein, which is cooked whole and carved for serving.
Flour
Dusting the birds helps the surface brown and crisp as they roast.
Butter
Basting adds fat that promotes browning and helps keep the meat moist.

The step that matters

Basting the partridges generously with butter while roasting. Melted fat carries heat across the surface, promoting even browning, and it coats the lean meat to limit drying. Too little basting can leave the birds dry and pale.

“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.

You might also like

Brown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesWhite BreadWhite Bread80 recipesBread OmeletteBread Omelette60 recipesOatmeal BreadOatmeal Bread51 recipes