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Fried Pheasants

A dish of pheasants fried in butter and Crisco after soaking in hot water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Fried Pheasants

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Soak the pheasants in hot water overnight.

  2. Remove from water and drain them.

  3. Dredge the pheasants well with flour and salt.

Fry

  1. Heat 2 tablespoons of Crisco and 1 tablespoon of butter in a skillet.

  2. Fry the pheasants for one hour, browning them well.

  3. After browning, cover the skillet and let them cook slowly.

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. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Pheasant + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together225 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetaldehyde (pungent, ethereal).

  3. Pheasant + buttertop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together511 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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
Provide the lean meat that is browned and slowly cooked until tender.
Flour
Coats the birds so they brown and form a crisp, golden crust in the fat.
Crisco
Fat for frying that conducts heat evenly and helps the coating brown.
Butter
Adds flavor and aroma to the frying fat and helps browning.

The step that matters

Browning before covering. Browning the coated pheasants well in hot fat builds the crust and flavor through Maillard reactions. Covering too early traps steam, which softens the crust instead of browning it.

“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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