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The Snipes and Pheasants

A roast of pheasants and snipes served with brown sauce, toast, gravy, and bread sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and shallot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,737 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

The Snipes and Pheasants

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. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).

Roast the pheasants

  1. Roast the pheasants for 30 minutes, basting with clarified butter.

Make the snipe toasts

  1. Remove the trail and sandbag from the snipes and chop them with parsley, shallot, and mushrooms.

  2. Mix the chopped ingredients with brown sauce and cook over low heat.

  3. Prepare slightly buttered toast and spread the cooked trail over it.

  4. Cut the toast into rounds or squares and place a snipe on each piece.

Serve

  1. Serve with good gravy and bread sauce for the pheasants.

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 + shallottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,737 recipes

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

  2. Shallot + mushroomtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,982 recipes

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

  3. Mushroom + sherrytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,176 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methoxy-4-methylphenol (smoky, clove).

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

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

  5. Butter + mushroomtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

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

What each ingredient does

Pheasants
Provide the main roasted meat, cooked through in the oven and basted for moisture and color.
Snipes
Provide the small game birds that are placed whole on the toast as the featured item.
Clarified butter
Bastes the pheasants, adding richness and helping them brown evenly in the oven.
Mushrooms
Add earthy flavor and moisture to the chopped filling spread on the toast.
Brown sauce
Binds the chopped filling and adds savory depth to the cooked trail mixture.
Toast
Forms a crisp base that holds the cooked trail and supports the snipe.

The step that matters

Cooking the chopped snipe mixture over low heat. Gentle heat cooks the chopped filling through without drying it or scorching the brown sauce, keeping the mixture moist enough to spread evenly on the toast.

Swap the parsley

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pheasant, butter, shallot, mushroom, sauce, bread, sherry):

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Parsleythe original
  4. Tarragonfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against pheasant, butter, shallot, mushroom, sauce, bread, sherry. 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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