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To Fry Pheasant or Young Chicken

A pheasant or young chicken fried with butter, cream, flour, curry powder, and seasonings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

To Fry Pheasant or Young Chicken

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Pick, singe, wash, and dry the bird thoroughly.

  2. Season the inside and outside with salt and pepper.

  3. In a frying pan, heat 2 tablespoons of butter until hot.

  4. Split the bird up the back and lay it breast side up in the pan.

Cook

  1. Cover the pan tightly.

  2. Add a little water from time to time.

  3. Turn the bird often.

  4. Cook for one hour over low heat.

Make the gravy

  1. Add ¼ cup of cream, a small egg-sized piece of butter, 2 tablespoons of brown flour, and ½ teaspoon of curry powder to the gravy.

  2. Season with additional salt and pepper to taste.

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 + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  2. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Pheasant + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together225 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetaldehyde (pungent, ethereal).

  4. Pheasant + creamtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together112 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

  5. Flour + peppertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Pheasant or young chicken
Forms the main body of the dish, cooked gently until tender in the covered pan.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and helps the bird brown in the hot pan.
Cream
Adds richness and body to the gravy.
Brown flour
Thickens the gravy so it clings to the bird.
Curry powder
Adds aroma and warm spice to the gravy.

The step that matters

Cook for one hour over low heat, turning often. Low, covered heat with occasional turning and a little water cooks the bird through gently and keeps the meat from drying or scorching before it is tender. Too much heat can burn the butter and toughen the meat.

“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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