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Chartreuse of Partridges

A partridge dish with carrots, turnips, spinach, cabbage, butter, and salmis sauce, steamed in a buttered mold.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and turnip match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,002 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Chartreuse of Partridges

Oven, in the book's wordsA rather hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Boil the carrots and turnips until just tender.

  2. Prepare the dry-pressed spinach.

  3. Line a round or oval mold with buttered paper.

  4. Cut the carrots, turnips, and spinach into decorative shapes.

Assemble

  1. Create a wall with the pressed braised cabbage in the mold.

  2. Fill the center with braised partridge meat and a little salmis sauce.

Serve

  1. Steam the chartreuse until hot.

  2. Turn it out onto a serving dish and pour salmis sauce around the base.

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 + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Turnip + spinachtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together320 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Turnip + cabbagetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together897 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Carrot + spinachtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together870 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

  5. Spinach + cabbagetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together190 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

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

What each ingredient does

Carrots
Hold their shape when cut and add colour and sweetness to the chartreuse.
Turnips
Provide a firm, tender vegetable layer that keeps its shape when cut and served.
Dry-pressed spinach
Adds a dense, green layer with earthy flavour once its moisture is pressed out.
Pressed braised cabbage
Forms the wall of the mold, holding its shape once pressed and braised.
Braised partridge meat
Serves as the rich, savoury filling at the centre of the dish.
Salmis sauce
Adds moisture and rich, savoury flavour to the filling and the dish.

The step that matters

Create a wall with the pressed braised cabbage in the mold.. The cabbage must be well pressed so it holds its shape. Excess moisture would make the wall collapse and dilute the sauce and filling during steaming and unmolding.

Swap the cabbage

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (carrot, turnip, spinach, butter, meat, sauce):

  1. Leekfits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Parsnipfits better
  4. Cabbagethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against carrot, turnip, spinach, butter, meat, sauce. 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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