Name: Boiled Partridge
Ingredients: 2 partridges; ½ cup thick cream; 2 tablespoons butter; ¼ teaspoon salt

Why it works: Cream and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Boiled Partridge

Ingredients

2 partridges
½ cup thick cream
2 tablespoons butter
¼ teaspoon salt

Directions

Prepare

Clean and wash the partridges well, cut off the heads, and truss them like boiled fowls.

Cook and serve

Put the partridges into boiling water and boil quickly for 15 minutes.
In a saucepan, melt the butter and add the thick cream and salt. Stir the sauce over the heat until hot.
Pour the sauce over the partridges. Serve immediately.

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.

Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together41,516 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

What each ingredient does

Partridges: Form the main body of the dish, cooked gently by boiling until tender.
Thick cream: Adds richness and a smooth, velvety texture to the sauce.
Butter: Adds fat and flavour to the sauce and helps it become smooth.

“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.