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Pheasant, Stuffed and Roasted

A pheasant stuffed with a liver, breadcrumb, ham, mushroom, and herb mixture, roasted and served with a mushroom and stock sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 26 ingredients
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Why it works: Shallot and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,737 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Pheasant, Stuffed and Roasted

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the pheasant

  1. Pick, draw, and singe the pheasant, then truss it for roasting.

  2. Wash the liver, fry it in hot fat until cooked, then mince finely.

  3. In a mortar, pound the liver and mix with breadcrumbs, ham, mushrooms, shallot, parsley, pepper, salt, and butter.

  4. Bind the mixture with the egg yolk and stuff it into the pheasant.

  5. Cover the breast with bacon slices and secure with twine.

Roast the pheasant

  1. Roast the pheasant before a clear fire until done.

Make the sauce

  1. For the sauce, heat olive oil in a stewpan and add minced mushrooms, garlic, shallots, and capers.

  2. Add cloves, bay leaf, thyme, parsley, and peppercorns, stirring over gentle heat for 5-6 minutes.

  3. Pour in stock and sherry, then simmer gently for 15 minutes.

  4. Remove cloves, herbs, and garlic, add more stock, and simmer for 5 minutes.

  5. Skim the sauce, strain it through a fine sieve, and add lemon juice.

  6. Heat the sauce again before serving.

  7. Optionally, add tomatoes and simmer until they can be pressed through a sieve.

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. Shallot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,737 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. Mushroom + shallottop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,982 recipes

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

  4. Mushroom + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

  5. Pheasant + shallottop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together89 recipes

    Shared aroma: geraniol (rose, geranium).

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 that the stuffing and bacon wrap surround during roasting.
Breadcrumbs
Absorb the liver and butter, giving the stuffing body and a moist, soft texture.
Egg yolk
Binds the stuffing mixture together so it holds its shape inside the bird.
Butter
Adds richness and moisture to the stuffing as it cooks.
Mushrooms
Contribute savory, earthy flavour and moisture to both the stuffing and the sauce.
Sherry
Adds acidity and depth of flavour to the sauce as it simmers and reduces.

The step that matters

Simmering the sauce after adding stock and sherry. Simmering gently concentrates the liquid and mellows the alcohol and acidity, so the sauce becomes rich rather than thin or sharp. Adding more stock later needs a short simmer to keep the flavour balanced.

Swap the parsley

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pheasant, ham, mushroom, shallot, pepper, butter, egg):

  1. Thymefits about as well
  2. Parsleythe original
  3. Capersfits about as well
  4. Tarragonfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against pheasant, ham, mushroom, shallot, pepper, butter, egg. 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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