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Salmi of Pheasants

Salmi of Pheasants is a pheasant dish served with a brown sauce made from sherry, stock, and roux.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Sherry and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 18% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,107 recipes. Both carry piperonal, which smells bitter, coconut. The science ↓

Salmi of Pheasants

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the pheasant

  1. Roast the pheasants and let them cool.

  2. Cut each pheasant into nine neat pieces: two from near the pinion, three from the breast, two cuisses, and two drumsticks.

  3. Remove the skin and chop the backbone into small pieces.

Make the sauce

  1. In a small stewpan, combine the chopped bones, sherry, and stock. Simmer slowly for about one hour, then strain the mixture.

  2. Mix the strained liquid with a little roux to create a brown sauce thick enough to coat the pheasant pieces.

Finish and serve

  1. For a cold entrée, add gelatine to the sauce to firm it up when cold.

  2. For a glossy finish, stir in warm aspic jelly just 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. Sherry + peppertop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,107 recipes

    Shared aroma: piperonal (bitter, coconut).

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

    Shared aroma: sabinene (woody, terpenic).

  3. Pheasant + sherrytop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Pheasants
Provide the main meat, which is roasted, cooled and cut into pieces for the dish.
Sherry
Adds aromatic depth and a light acidity to the simmered sauce base.
Stock or consommé
Forms the liquid body of the sauce, carrying flavour from the simmered bones.
Roux
Thickens the strained liquid so the brown sauce clings to the pheasant pieces.
Gelatine
Sets the sauce to a firmer texture when it is served cold.

The step that matters

Simmering and straining the bone liquid. A slow simmer draws flavour and body from the bones without boiling the liquid cloudy. Straining removes bone fragments so the sauce stays smooth before the roux is added.

“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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