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Pheasant

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Pheasant

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Remove the legs and wings from the pheasant.

  2. Slice the breast into two or three pieces.

  3. Cut off the merrythought by passing the knife under it towards the neck.

  4. Make two or three long incisions into the breast.

  5. Pour a glass of hot port wine over the breast.

  6. Cut the lemon in half; cover one side with coarse sea salt and the other with cayenne pepper.

  7. Squeeze the lemon juice over the breast 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. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. Port wine + peppertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,804 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-ethyl-2-methoxyphenol (smoky, clove).

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

    Shared aroma: sabinene (woody, terpenic).

  4. Port wine + lemontop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,100 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  5. Pheasant + lemontop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together163 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Lemonthe original
  2. Plumfits about as well
  3. Figfits less well
  4. Cherryfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against pheasant, port wine, pepper. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

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