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Roast Woodcock

A roasted woodcock seasoned with butter, salt, and pepper, served on toast.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 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 Woodcock

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Pluck the bird and remove the gizzard.

  2. Truss the bird, placing the head under the wing or sticking the bill in the breast.

  3. Lard the bird with butter.

Roast and serve

  1. Bake in a 400°F (200°C) oven for a few moments.

  2. Baste well with butter and hot water.

  3. Place a slice of bread under the bird to catch the juices.

  4. Serve the bird on the toast.

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. Pepper + breadtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,964 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  3. Butter + peppertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

What each ingredient does

Woodcock
Is the main protein, cooked whole so its meat stays moist and tender.
Butter
Larding and basting add fat that carries flavour and helps the skin brown.
Bread
Catches the drippings under the bird, soaking up juices to make a toast base.

The step that matters

Baste well with butter and hot water. Fat and liquid spooned over the bird during roasting keep the surface from drying out and help it brown evenly. Too little basting leaves the lean meat dry.

“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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