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Larded Partridge

A roasted partridge larded with bacon lardons, seasoned with flour, pepper, and sea salt, served with watercress, brown gravy, bread sauce, and fried bread crumbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and watercress match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 340 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Larded Partridge

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Truss the partridge for roasting.

  2. Lard the breast with lardons of bacon.

Roast

  1. Roast for 20 minutes, basting frequently.

  2. Ten minutes before it's done, sprinkle with flour, pepper, and coarse sea salt.

Serve

  1. Garnish with watercress and serve with brown gravy, bread sauce, and fried bread crumbs.

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. Flour + watercresstop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together340 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Pepper + watercresstop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together983 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Watercress + breadtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together307 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Pepper + breadtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,964 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Bacon lardons
Melt slowly into the breast, adding fat and moisture to lean partridge meat as it cooks.
Flour
Sprinkled on near the end, it helps the skin brown and crisp.

The step that matters

Basting frequently during the roast. Lean game birds dry out easily. Regular basting spreads the fat and juices over the surface, keeping the meat moist while the skin browns.

“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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