Skip to main content
Main

How to Roast a Pheasant a LA Sainte Alliance

Roasted pheasant seasoned with salt, pepper, herbs, and butter, cooked until juices run clear.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Pepper and thyme are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,585 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

How to Roast a Pheasant a LA Sainte Alliance

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

Prepare

  1. Preheat oven to 400°F (200°C).

  2. Clean the pheasant and remove any feathers.

  3. Season the inside and outside of the pheasant with coarse sea salt and pepper.

  4. Stuff the cavity with herbs and a few pats of butter.

  5. Place the pheasant in a roasting pan and cover it with more butter.

Roast and serve

  1. Roast in the oven for about 1 hour, basting occasionally.

  2. Check for doneness; the juices should run clear when pierced. Let rest before serving.

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 + thymetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Pheasant + thymetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together97 recipes

    Shared aroma: geraniol (rose, geranium).

  3. Butter + thymetop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,758 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Pheasant + peppertop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together462 recipes

    Shared aroma: sabinene (woody, terpenic).

  5. Pheasant + buttertop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together511 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
Forms the main body of the dish, cooked whole so the meat stays moist and tender.
Butter
Adds moisture and fat that help the skin brown and keep the meat from drying out.
Herbs
Infuse aroma into the meat from inside the cavity as it roasts.

The step that matters

Checking doneness. Pheasant is lean and dries out quickly, so overcooking makes it tough. Clear juices when pierced are a practical sign it is cooked through, which is why checking rather than relying only on time matters.

Swap the thyme

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

  1. Thymethe original
  2. Parsleyfits about as well
  3. Nutmegfits less well
  4. Celeryfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against pheasant, pepper, butter. 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.

You might also like

Pheasant SoupPheasant Soup25 recipesTomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipes