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Prairie Chickens, Partridges and Quails

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Prairie Chickens, Partridges and Quails

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Dress and clean the birds using a little soda in the washing water; rinse and dry them.

  2. Fill the birds with dressing, sew them up, and bind the legs and wings with cords.

  3. Place them in a steamer over hot water and cook until just done.

  4. Transfer to a pan with butter and set in the oven, basting frequently with melted butter until browned, about 15 minutes.

  5. Serve on a platter with sprigs of parsley and currant jelly.

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. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + parsleytop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,675 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Mace + curranttop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,791 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  5. Mace + parsleytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,268 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

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

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicken, butter, pepper, mace, flour, egg, parsley):

  1. Lemonfits better
  2. Limefits better
  3. Mangofits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, butter, pepper, mace, flour, egg, parsley. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

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