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Roast Pheasant

A whole pheasant roasted with salt, butter or oil, flour dusting, served with brown gravy and bread sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Roast Pheasant

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Choose a pheasant that has been hung for some time to enhance flavor.

  2. Pluck and draw the bird, then wipe the inside with a damp cloth.

  3. Truss the pheasant like a partridge, bringing the head under the wing if left on.

Roast and serve

  1. Roast the pheasant before a brisk fire, basting it regularly.

  2. Dust the bird with flour and froth it nicely.

  3. Serve with brown gravy poured around the bird and a portion of bread sauce.

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 + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: acetaldehyde (pungent, ethereal).

  4. Butter + saucetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,338 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Pheasant + breadtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together239 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

Pheasant
Provides the main lean meat, which benefits from hanging to deepen its flavor.
Butter or oil for basting
Adds moisture and fat to the surface, helping it brown and stay tender.
Flour for dusting
Helps the surface brown and crisp during roasting.

The step that matters

Basting regularly during roasting. Pheasant is very lean, so its meat dries out easily. Regular basting with fat keeps the surface moist and encourages even golden browning.

“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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