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Faisan Rôti

Roasted pheasant served with buttered bread rolls and lemon slices.

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 ↓

Faisan Rôti

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no cooking times; the times in the steps were added in transcription, so check for doneness rather than trusting the clock.

Prepare and roast

  1. Pluck and gut the pheasant.

  2. Wrap it in thick buttered paper.

  3. Place it on a spit and roast for 30 minutes.

Brown and serve

  1. Unwrap to brown the skin, basting with butter mixed with wine.

  2. Serve with small round bread rolls and lemon slices.

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. Wine + lemontop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,157 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

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

  4. Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  5. Pheasant + breadtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together239 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Pheasant
Provides the lean meat that is roasted and carved for serving.
Butter
Adds moisture and fat that helps the exposed skin brown as it roasts.
Malaga wine or madeira
Adds sweetness and aroma to the butter used for basting.

The step that matters

Unwrapping to brown the skin, basting with butter and wine. Once the paper is removed, the skin dries and can burn or stay pale if not basted. Butter carries fat and moisture to the surface, and its milk solids and the wine's sugars help the skin brown through the Maillard reaction while the meat stays juicy.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Applefits better
  2. Grapefits about as well
  3. Plumfits about as well
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pheasant, butter, wine, bread. 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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