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Pheasant, Hashed

A dish of roasted pheasant pieces simmered in a sauce of butter, flour, stock, claret, onion, herbs, and seasoning.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and thyme match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,057 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Pheasant, Hashed

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the sauce

  1. Place the pheasant joints in a cool place and cover them until needed.

  2. Melt the butter in a saucepan, then mix in the flour until smooth.

  3. Stir the mixture over gentle heat until lightly colored.

  4. Pour in the stock or water and add the claret, onion, parsley, thyme, bay leaf, pepper, and salt.

  5. Simmer the sauce gently until thick enough to coat the spoon, then strain it.

Heat and serve

  1. Add the pheasant pieces to the sauce and let them simmer for 1-2 minutes until hot, ensuring the sauce does not boil.

  2. Serve the pheasant on a hot dish with the hot gravy poured over it.

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 + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

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

  3. Thyme + peppertop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,585 recipes

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

  4. Onion + thymetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,171 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  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

Pheasant
Is the main protein, already cooked, and is only gently reheated in the sauce.
Butter
Carries the flour and gives the base of the roux a rich, nutty flavor.
Flour
Thickens the sauce with the butter as a roux, giving it body that coats the spoon.
Claret
Adds acidity and wine flavor that balances the richness of the gravy.
Onion
Contributes savory sweetness and aroma as it simmers into the sauce.

The step that matters

Keep the sauce below a boil when the pheasant goes in. Boiling a sauce that already holds cooked meat toughens the meat's proteins and can make the gravy break or reduce unevenly, so the pheasant should only be heated gently until hot.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pheasant, butter, flour, parsley, thyme, pepper):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Carrotfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pheasant, butter, flour, parsley, thyme, 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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