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Roast Grouse

Roast grouse prepared by roasting a whole bird with butter, salt, and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 21% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 85,593 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Roast Grouse

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

  1. Hang the grouse in a cool place for at least three days after being shot.

  2. Pluck, singe, and draw the birds, then wipe them inside and out with a clean cloth.

  3. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

Roast

  1. Place the grouse in a roasting pan and cover them with small pieces of butter.

  2. Roast the birds in the oven for 1.5 hours, basting constantly with the melted butter.

Serve

  1. Serve the grouse on a hot platter.

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. Butter + peppertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Grouse
Lean game birds whose flesh is the main part of the dish.
Butter
Adds fat and moisture to the surface and helps the birds brown as they roast.

The step that matters

Basting constantly during roasting. Grouse is a lean bird that can dry out in the oven. Regular basting with melted butter keeps the surface moist and encourages even browning.

“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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