Skip to main content
Main

Broiled Partridge

Broiled partridges seasoned with pepper, sea salt, and butter, served with cress or lemon.

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

Why it works: Pepper and watercress work together. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 983 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Broiled Partridge

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Pluck and draw the partridges, then remove the head and feet.

  2. Cut each partridge in half, wash, and wipe dry.

Broil

  1. Dip the partridges in melted butter.

  2. Broil over a clear fire until well done and nicely colored.

  3. Sprinkle with pepper and coarse sea salt.

  4. Add a teaspoon of melted butter on each bird.

  5. Garnish with curled cress, watercress, or pieces 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 + watercresstop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together983 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Butter + peppertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

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

  3. Butter + watercresstop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together842 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, 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 protein that is cooked through over direct heat.
Melted butter
Adds richness and moisture, and helps the surface brown during broiling.

The step that matters

Broil until well done and nicely colored. Direct high heat browns the skin through Maillard reactions while the meat cooks through. Stopping early leaves the meat underdone, and running too long dries the lean meat, so watch the color and doneness together.

“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

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipesYorkshire PuddingYorkshire Pudding264 recipes