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Woodcock, Stuffed

A dish of woodcocks stuffed with a mixture of bacon, parsley, onion, salt, pepper, and egg yolks, then roasted and served with a sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Woodcock, Stuffed

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the birds

  1. Pluck and singe the woodcocks, then remove the insides.

  2. Chop the insides finely with bacon, parsley, onion, salt, and pepper.

  3. Mix the chopped ingredients with the yolks of two eggs.

  4. Fill the woodcocks with the mixture, sew them up, and truss for roasting.

Cook

  1. Cover the bottom of a stewpan with thin slices of bacon.

  2. Place the birds in the stewpan and cover them with more bacon.

  3. Simmer for 15 minutes, then add broth and white wine.

  4. Boil over gentle heat until cooked through.

Finish and serve

  1. Remove the birds and place them on a dish.

  2. Skim the fat off the sauce, strain it, add vinegar, and pour over the birds.

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

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

  2. Parsley + oniontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

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

  3. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  4. White wine + vinegartop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,776 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  5. Onion + white winetop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,535 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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

What each ingredient does

Woodcocks
Form the main dish, cooked whole with the stuffing inside.
Egg yolks
Bind the chopped stuffing so it holds together when filled and cooked.
Bacon
Adds fat and savoury flavour, lining the pan and wrapping the birds as they cook.
White wine
Adds acidity and flavour to the braising liquid that becomes the sauce.
Vinegar
Adds sharp acidity to the strained sauce just before serving.

The step that matters

Skim the fat off the sauce, strain it, add vinegar, and pour over the birds.. Skimming removes excess rendered fat so the sauce is not greasy, and adding vinegar at the end keeps its sharp flavour bright, since acid can dull during long boiling.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, parsley, pepper, white wine, vinegar):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, parsley, pepper, white wine, vinegar. 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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