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Salad

Partridge Salad

A salad of roast partridge remains mixed with oil, tarragon vinegar, shallot, lettuce, hard‑boiled eggs, gherkins, pickled onions, and capers.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Shallot and capers match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 405 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Partridge Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Marinate

  1. Place the remains of roast partridge in a deep dish with oil, tarragon vinegar, minced shallot, salt, and pepper.

Serve

  1. At serving time, place the partridge in a serving dish and surround it with the lettuce.

  2. Garnish the partridge with hard-boiled eggs, minced gherkins, pickled onions, and capers.

  3. Stir the mixture from the deep dish thoroughly with the partridge.

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. Shallot + caperstop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together405 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Tarragon + shallottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together602 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Lettuce + caperstop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together372 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Tarragon + lettucetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together425 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Tarragon + caperstop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together379 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Partridge
Provides the main body of the salad, soaking up the dressing as it rests.
Oil
Adds moisture and richness and carries the flavour of the dressing through the meat.
Tarragon vinegar
Adds acidity and a bright, sharp note that balances the richness of the oil and meat.
Shallot
Adds a mild, sharp aroma that flavours the dressing.
Hard boiled eggs
Add richness and a soft, creamy texture against the lettuce and meat.

The step that matters

Stir the mixture from the deep dish thoroughly with the partridge. Thorough stirring spreads the oil, vinegar, and shallot evenly over every piece of meat. Unevenly coated pieces taste flat or sharp, and the dressing that pools at the bottom of the dish is not absorbed into the meat.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (tarragon, vinegar, shallot, pepper, lettuce, egg, capers):

  1. Mustardfits better
  2. Chivefits better
  3. Beetrootfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against tarragon, vinegar, shallot, pepper, lettuce, egg, capers. 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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