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Partridge Soup

A soup made from partridges, ham, butter, vegetables, spices, and sherry.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and thyme match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,057 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Partridge Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the stock

  1. Fry the vegetables, ham, and spices in butter until browned.

  2. Remove the fillets from the partridges and set aside.

  3. Pound the carcasses in a mortar and add to the stewpan.

  4. Pour in 1 quart of water and boil for 1.5 hours.

  5. Strain the mixture through a fine sieve or cloth.

Finish the soup

  1. Add the fillets to the strained soup and simmer gently for 30 minutes.

  2. Stir in the sherry and cayenne before serving.

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. Parsley + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Carrot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

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

  3. Carrot + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  4. Celery + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,810 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  5. Thyme + clovetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,108 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

What each ingredient does

Partridges
Provide the main meat and the bones that give the soup its body and flavour.
Butter
Carries the aromatics and starts browning, building savoury flavour before the water goes in.
Raw ham
Adds salty, savoury depth to the stock as it fries with the vegetables.
Onions
Browning them in butter adds sweetness and savoury depth to the stock.
Sherry
Adds acidity and aromatic sweetness to the finished soup.

The step that matters

Straining the mixture through a fine sieve or cloth. Pounded bones and vegetables leave fine particles that cloud the stock; a fine sieve or cloth removes them so the soup stays clear and smooth.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (ham, butter, carrot, celery, parsley, thyme, clove):

  1. Parsnipfits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Turnipfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against ham, butter, carrot, celery, parsley, thyme, clove. 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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