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Roast Partridge

If the birds have a bitter taste when cooked, do not eat them. This may indicate they have fed on poisonous laurel berries.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Roast Partridge

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Pluck, remove the innards, and truss the partridges.

  2. Roast them for about 20 minutes, basting well with butter.

  3. When the gravy begins to run, they are done.

  4. Serve three partridges on each dish with fried bread crumbs arranged in small heaps.

  5. Serve the gravy in a separate tureen.

  6. Orange sauce is a nice accompaniment.

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. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  2. Butter + saucetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,338 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Bread + orangetop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,084 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  4. Bread + saucetop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,934 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Butter + orangetop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,301 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

Butter and sauce barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 15,338 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

Swap the orange

The recipe marks orange as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, bread, sauce):

  1. Figfits better
  2. Coconutfits better
  3. Applefits better
  4. Orangethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, bread, sauce. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

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