Skip to main content
Main

To Roast Pheasants or Partridges

Roasted pheasants or partridges served with gravy and bread sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Ketchup and sauce match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,099 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

To Roast Pheasants or Partridges

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.

Roast

  1. Preheat oven to 400°F (200°C).

  2. Keep the pheasants or partridges at a good distance from the fire.

  3. Baste them often with fresh butter.

  4. Roast for about 30 minutes if the fire is good.

Make the gravy and serve

  1. Prepare gravy by combining mutton scrap, ketchup, and lemon pickle; strain it.

  2. Serve the roasted birds with the gravy and bread sauce.

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. Ketchup + saucetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,099 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  3. Mutton + breadtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,488 recipes

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

  4. Butter + saucetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,338 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

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

Butter and sauce barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 15,338 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

Pheasants or partridges
The main meat, which the roasting cooks through while basting keeps the skin moist.
Fresh butter
Fat for basting, adding moisture and promoting gentle browning on the birds.
Mutton scrap
Meaty base for the gravy, adding savoury depth.

The step that matters

Keep the birds away from the fire. Direct, intense heat can scorch the outside before the meat cooks through. A steadier distance lets the heat penetrate evenly, and regular basting keeps the surface moist and golden.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Applefits about as well
  2. Lemonthe original
  3. Red currantfits about as well
  4. Grapefits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against pheasant, butter, mutton, ketchup, bread, sauce. 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.

More roasted pheasant recipes

and Partridge 4with Mushrooms 3 See all 50 →

You might also like

Brown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipesLemon SauceLemon Sauce236 recipesWhite BreadWhite Bread80 recipes