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Ortolans, Roasted

Roasted ortolans wrapped in vine leaves and bacon, served with orange‑flavored gravy and watercress.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Watercress and orange work together. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 98 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Ortolans, Roasted

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Truss the ortolans without drawing them.

  2. Lay a vine leaf and a slice of bacon over the breast of each bird, and tie them with string.

Roast and serve

  1. Place the birds over a brisk fire and baste them liberally.

  2. Roast for 25 minutes.

  3. Serve on toast that has been placed under the birds while roasting.

  4. Garnish with watercress and serve orange-flavored gravy in a tureen.

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. Watercress + orangetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Ortolans
The small birds are the main dish, cooked whole and kept moist by basting.
Bacon
Its fat melts over the breast, basting the lean meat and adding savoury flavour.

The step that matters

Baste the birds liberally over the brisk fire. Ortolans are small and lean, so they dry out quickly over direct heat. Frequent basting with fat keeps the surface moist and helps it brown evenly.

“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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