Name: To Roast the Pintail, or Sea Pheasant
Ingredients: 1 pintail or sea pheasant; Flour for dusting; Butter for basting; Cayenne pepper; Coarse sea salt; 1 lemon; Brown gravy (optional)

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 ↓

To Roast the Pintail, or Sea Pheasant

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare and roast

Preheat your oven to 400°F (200°C).
Dust the pheasant with flour and place it on a spit over a clear, quick fire.
Turn the bird briskly and baste it with butter continuously.
Roast for 25 to 30 minutes, then remove from the spit.

Rest and serve

Let it rest before the fire for 2 to 3 minutes to develop a rich gravy.
Score the breast, sprinkle with cayenne and coarse sea salt.
Serve with a cut lemon and brown gravy, if desired.

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.

Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together27,047 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together124,287 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Pheasant + flourtop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together225 recipes

Shared aroma: acetaldehyde (pungent, ethereal).
Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together41,227 recipes

Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).
Flour + lemontop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together30,404 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Pintail or sea pheasant: Provides the lean meat that is roasted as the main dish.
Butter: Basting fat that carries heat and adds richness and browning to the skin.
Flour: Dusted on the bird to help form a light crust that browns during roasting.
Lemon: Adds bright acidity that cuts through the rich, fatty meat.

The step that matters

Turn and baste continuously. Frequent turning and basting with butter keeps the surface from scorching while the fat promotes even browning. Uneven heat on a fire can burn one side before the interior cooks through.

“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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Pheasant Soup25 recipes

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To Roast the Pintail, or Sea Pheasant