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Salmi of Woodcocks

Salmi of Woodcocks is a sauce-based dish of woodcocks simmered in wine, broth, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Salmi of Woodcocks

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the birds

  1. Cut off the legs, wings, and breasts of the cold woodcocks.

Make the sauce

  1. Combine the remaining bird parts with white wine, shallot, parsley, cayenne pepper, black whole pepper, and broth to make a consomme.

  2. Strain the consomme through a silk sieve and skim off the grease.

  3. Add sauce tournee and bring to a boil.

  4. Squeeze in the lemon juice and pour the sauce over the woodcocks.

Finish and serve

  1. Let the woodcocks soak in the sauce without boiling.

  2. Serve the salmi hot.

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. Parsley + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Shallot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,737 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  3. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  4. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  5. Shallot + lemontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,523 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

What each ingredient does

Woodcocks
Provide the main meat, which absorbs the sauce's flavour as it soaks.
White wine
Adds acidity and aromatic depth to the consomme.
Sauce tournee
Thickens and enriches the sauce, giving it body.
Lemon
Adds acidity that brightens the rich sauce.

The step that matters

Let the woodcocks soak without boiling. Once the sauce boils, proteins in the meat tighten and toughen, and the sauce can turn greasy or split. Keeping it just below a boil lets the birds soften gently and absorb flavour.

“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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