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Alouettes Ou Autres Petits Oiseaux En Salmis

A French dish of small birds cooked with salt, wine, broth, shallots, and breadcrumbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and shallot are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,898 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Alouettes Ou Autres Petits Oiseaux En Salmis

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

  1. Clean the birds and cut them into quarters.

Make the sauce

  1. Mash the livers and gizzards with red wine, salt, pepper, broth, and chopped shallots.

  2. Bring the mixture to a boil and cook for 15 minutes.

Finish cooking

  1. Add the birds and a little breadcrumbs or croutons.

  2. Cook for an additional 30 minutes.

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. Pepper + shallottop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,898 recipes

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

  2. Red wine + shallottop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together231 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  3. Red wine + peppertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl 2-methylbutyrate (fruity, apple).

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

What each ingredient does

Small birds
Provide the main meat, which becomes tender through long simmering in the liquid.
Red wine
Adds acidity and depth of flavour to the braising liquid.
Shallots
Add a mild, sweet aromatic base to the sauce.
Breadcrumbs or croutons
Soak up the cooking liquid and thicken the sauce slightly.

The step that matters

Cooking the birds in the simmering mixture. Adding the birds only after the sauce has simmered means they cook gently in liquid. Too hard a boil can toughen the meat and make it dry, so keep the pot at a gentle simmer for the full 30 minutes.

Swap the shallot

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (red wine, pepper):

  1. Tomatofits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Carrotfits about as well
  4. Shallotthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against red wine, pepper. 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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