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Partridges a LA Braise

Partridges braised with bacon, beef, veal, herbs, and stock, served in a reduced gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,053 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Partridges a LA Braise

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the birds

  1. Truss the partridges with their legs inside the bodies.

  2. Lard the partridges and season them with beaten mace, pepper, and salt.

Stew

  1. In a stewpan, layer slices of bacon, beef, and veal.

  2. Add a piece of carrot, chopped onion, sweet herbs, and whole pepper.

  3. Place the partridges breast down.

  4. Cover the partridges with beef and veal slices.

  5. Sprinkle the partridges with chopped parsley.

  6. Cover the pan.

  7. Stew the contents for 8-10 minutes over low heat.

  8. Shake the pan and pour in 1 pint of weak stock.

  9. Cover tightly.

  10. Stew for 30 minutes over medium heat.

  11. Remove the birds.

Make the sauce

  1. Reduce the gravy to about ½ pint.

  2. Strain the gravy.

  3. Skim off the fat from the gravy.

  4. Stew veal sweetbread, truffles, morels, cockscombs, and fowl's livers in 1 pint of gravy for 30 minutes.

  5. Add blanched artichoke bottoms, asparagus tops, and mushrooms to the gravy.

  6. Combine the reduced gravy with the other gravy.

  7. Heat the partridges in the combined gravy.

  8. If the sauce is not thick enough, mix butter with flour.

  9. Stir the mixture into the 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. Carrot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  2. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Carrot + peppertop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,555 recipes

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

  4. Carrot + oniontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

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

  5. Beef + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,092 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
Provide the main meat, which becomes tender and flavourful through long, gentle stewing.
Bacon
Adds savoury fat and smoky flavour that seasons the birds and the gravy as they cook.
Flour
Thickens the sauce when cooked with butter into a paste that is stirred in.
Butter
Enriches the sauce and, blended with flour, gives it body and a glossy finish.

The step that matters

Stirring the butter and flour into the sauce. Adding flour directly to hot liquid forms lumps. Mixing it first with butter into a smooth paste lets it disperse evenly and thicken the gravy without clumping.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, veal, carrot, pepper, parsley, butter, flour):

  1. Parsnipfits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Turnipfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, veal, carrot, pepper, parsley, butter, flour. 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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