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Boiled Prairie Hen, or Partridge

A boiled prairie hen or partridge basted with butter, seasoned with salt, pepper, parsley, lemon, and served with maitre d'hotel butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Boiled Prairie Hen, or Partridge

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the bird

  1. Clean and prepare the bird as directed.

  2. Split the back of the bird.

  3. Butter it all over.

Grill and finish

  1. Place it on a hot grill.

  2. Turn several times to prevent burning.

  3. Cook for 15 to 20 minutes, depending on size.

  4. Sprinkle with salt and pepper just before done.

  5. Lay the bird on paper to absorb excess grease.

  6. Mix parsley, lemon juice, and 1 tablespoon of butter for the maitre d'hotel butter.

  7. Garnish with parsley.

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. Parsley + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

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

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

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

  4. Mushroom + white winetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,765 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity).

  5. Butter + mushroomtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Butter
Adds richness and moisture, and helps the skin brown during grilling.
Prairie hen
Main protein, cooked whole after being split so it cooks evenly.

The step that matters

Turning the bird on the hot grill. Frequent turning spreads the heat and keeps the skin from scorching before the inside is cooked through. Too little turning lets one side burn while the other stays underdone.

“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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