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Salad

Partridge Salad

A salad made with roast partridge, 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.

  2. Add oil, tarragon vinegar, minced shallot, salt, and pepper.

Assemble and serve

  1. At serving time, place the partridge in a serving dish.

  2. Surround it with halved or quartered hearts of lettuce.

  3. Garnish with quartered hard boiled eggs, minced gherkins, pickled onions, and capers.

  4. Stir everything together with the mixture from the deep dish.

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

Roast partridge
Forms the main protein of the salad, providing the body and savoury flavour.
Oil
Carries flavour and adds richness, coating the meat and greens in the dressing.
Tarragon vinegar
Adds acidity and a sharp, aromatic note that balances the oil and meat.
Hard boiled eggs
Add soft, creamy texture and mild richness as a garnish.

The step that matters

Stir everything together with the mixture from the deep dish. The partridge and dressing must be combined gently so the meat absorbs the oil and vinegar without breaking into shreds. Mixing at serving time keeps the lettuce crisp and prevents it from wilting in the acidic dressing.

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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