Why it works: Wheaten bread and butter work together. They rank in the top 22% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 195 recipes. Both carry 2,3-pentanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓
To Roast Woodcock, Snipe, Etc.
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.
Preheat your oven to 400°F (200°C).
Place the woodcock or snipe on a spit.
Toast the slice of wheaten bread until brown and place it on a dish under the birds.
Baste the birds with a little butter.
Let the trail drop onto the toast while roasting.
Once roasted, place the toast in the dish and lay the birds on top.
Heat the gravy over a lamp or chafing dish for three minutes and pour it into the dish.
Serve immediately.
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.
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Wheaten bread + buttertop 22% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together195 recipes
Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
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