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Salmi of Game

A stew of half-roasted game birds simmered with onions, carrot, mace, bay leaf, parsley, pepper, salt, and broth.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,053 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Salmi of Game

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the birds

  1. Remove all gristle, skin, and bones from the game birds.

  2. In a clean saucepan, combine the browned bird bodies with the bones, skins, and trimmings in another pot.

Make the sauce

  1. Add onions, carrot, mace, bay leaf, parsley, pepper, salt, and peppercorns to the second pot.

  2. Fry the mixture in butter until light brown.

  3. Pour in the gravy or broth and boil until reduced by half.

  4. Strain the sauce and season it, then pour it over the game in the first pot.

Heat and serve

  1. Heat the game gradually in the sauce without boiling.

  2. Arrange the birds on a serving dish and pour the sauce over them.

  3. Serve with slices of bread around the dish.

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. Carrot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Carrot + peppertop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,555 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  4. Onion + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  5. Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Game birds
Provide the main meat, which becomes tender as it heats gently in the sauce.
Butter
Fat that browns the onions and carrot, adding savoury flavour to the sauce base.
Onions
Break down during frying to add sweetness and body to the sauce.
Gravy or broth
Liquid base that, once reduced, gives the sauce its body and concentrated flavour.

The step that matters

Heat the game gradually without boiling. Boiling toughens meat proteins and makes them dry and stringy, so the birds should be heated slowly in the sauce.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, onion, carrot, parsley, pepper):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Celeryfits better
  3. Marjoramfits better
  4. Macethe original

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

“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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