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Roast Partridge

Roast partridges coated with allspice, white pepper, sea salt, butter, and a flour-water crust, baked until golden.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 ↓

Roast Partridge

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Pound allspice, white pepper, and coarse sea salt together.

  2. Rub the mixture over the partridges.

  3. Pack the birds in a baking pan and cover with plenty of butter.

  4. Cover with a flour and water crust and tie a paper over it.

Roast

  1. Roast the bird before a hot fire for 25 to 35 minutes, basting frequently.

  2. Flour and froth the bird before serving.

Serve

  1. Serve hot with gravy and bread sauce.

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. Allspice + flourtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,302 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Allspice + white peppertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together272 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Butter + allspicetop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,325 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Butter + white peppertop 28% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,814 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

Partridges
The main meat, cooked whole so it stays juicy under the crust.
Butter
Adds fat and moisture, and helps the surface brown while roasting.
Flour
Forms a sealed crust that traps heat and moisture around the birds.
Allspice
Adds warm, aromatic flavour to the meat.
White pepper
Adds mild, sharp heat that seasons the meat.

The step that matters

Roasting with frequent basting. Partridge is lean and dries out quickly over a hot fire. Frequent basting with butter adds moisture and fat to the surface, keeping the meat tender and helping it brown evenly.

Swap the white pepper

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Clovefits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, allspice, flour. 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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