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Wild Fowl, Salmi of

A stew of wild fowl with wine, veal gravy, and aromatics.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Wild Fowl, Salmi of

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut off the legs, wings, breast, and rump of the wild fowl and set aside for the salmi.

  2. If preserved, use the head, neck, back, and giblets as parings.

  3. Chop the shallots and place them in a clean saucepan.

Make the sauce

  1. Add the butter, bay leaf, mace, and peppercorns, and fry until lightly colored.

  2. Dredge in the flour and continue frying until brown, being careful not to burn the ingredients.

  3. Pour in the red wine and veal gravy, then add the parings of the wild fowl.

  4. Season with pepper and salt, and let simmer gently for 1.5 hours.

  5. Strain the gravy through a fine sieve over the meat in another saucepan.

Finish and serve

  1. Heat the meat gently without boiling, and add a dash of cayenne pepper.

  2. Just before serving, squeeze in the lemon juice.

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. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. Shallot + lemontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,523 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Shallot + flourtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,081 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Shallot + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,898 recipes

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

  5. Shallot + red winetop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together231 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Wild fowl meat
Provides the main protein, which becomes tender during the long gentle simmer.
Flour
Thickens the sauce and adds body as it browns with the fat.
Red wine
Adds acidity and depth of flavor to the sauce as it reduces.
Veal gravy
Forms the rich savory base of the sauce and adds body.
Butter
Carries the aromatics and adds richness while the shallots soften and color.
Shallots
Contribute sweetness and aroma as they soften and brown in the fat.

The step that matters

Dredge in the flour and fry until brown without burning. Flour browned in fat gives the sauce color and nutty flavor and thickens it. Burnt flour turns bitter and dark, spoiling the whole sauce, so heat must stay moderate and stirring constant.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (shallot, butter, flour, red wine, veal, pepper, lemon):

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Capersfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against shallot, butter, flour, red wine, veal, pepper, lemon. 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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