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Salmi of Pheasant

Roasted pheasant served with a brown sauce made from butter, thyme, bay leaf, sherry, and cayenne.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Thyme and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,973 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Salmi of Pheasant

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the pheasant

  1. Roast the pheasant until slightly more than half-done.

  2. Remove from heat and let it cool, then cut into neat joints and remove skin and fat.

Make the sauce

  1. In a saucepan, melt butter with thyme and bay leaf over low heat until lightly browned.

  2. Add brown sauce and sherry, then simmer gently for 15 minutes.

  3. Strain the gravy, skim off fat, and add cayenne and lemon juice.

Combine and serve

  1. Return the gravy to the saucepan with the pheasant pieces and heat gradually without boiling.

  2. Serve on a hot dish, pour sauce over, and garnish with fried sippets.

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. Thyme + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,973 recipes

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

  2. Thyme + sherrytop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together702 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  3. Pheasant + thymetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together97 recipes

    Shared aroma: geraniol (rose, geranium).

  4. Butter + sherrytop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,505 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

Butter and sauce barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 15,338 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 meat, which is cooked partly, then finished gently in the sauce.
Butter
Adds richness and gentle browning to the base of the sauce.
Brown sauce
Forms the body and savoury depth of the gravy.
Sherry
Adds acidity and aromatic sweetness that rounds out the sauce.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich, heavy gravy.

The step that matters

Heating the pheasant in the gravy. Once the gravy is returned, it should heat gradually without boiling. Boiling toughens the proteins in the meat and can make the sauce break or turn cloudy, so gentle heat keeps the pheasant tender.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pheasant, butter, thyme, sauce, sherry):

  1. Lemonthe original
  2. Plumfits about as well
  3. Apricotfits less well
  4. Grapefits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against pheasant, butter, thyme, sauce, sherry. 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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