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Stewed Partridge

A stew of partridge with onion, butter, flour, water, wine, and vinegar, served with toast slices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Stewed Partridge

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the partridge into pieces.

Make the gravy

  1. In a stew pan, combine the onion rings, butter, flour, water, wine, and vinegar.

  2. Boil the mixture once, then add the partridge.

  3. Simmer gently until the partridge is cooked through.

Serve

  1. Garnish with slices of toast and pour the gravy over them.

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 + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Wine + vinegartop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,493 recipes

    Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).

  3. Butter + winetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,645 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

  4. Onion + vinegartop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,226 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  5. Onion + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

What each ingredient does

Butter and flour
Flour rolled into the butter thickens the liquid into a smooth gravy.
Onion
Sliced onion softens and adds sweetness and savour to the gravy.
Vinegar and wine
Acidic liquids add sharpness that balances the richness of the gravy.

The step that matters

Simmer gently until the partridge is cooked through. Boiling vigorously toughens meat proteins and can break up the flour-thickened gravy, so a gentle simmer keeps the meat tender and the sauce smooth.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, flour, wine, vinegar):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Chivefits better
  3. Mustardfits about as well
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, wine, vinegar. 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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