Skip to main content
Main

Roast Grouse

Roast grouse is a plucked and drawn bird roasted in a dripping pan, basted with butter, served on buttered toast with optional gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Butter and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Roast Grouse

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Hang the grouse for as long as possible.

  2. Pluck and draw the birds, then wipe them clean without washing.

  3. Truss the birds without the head, cutting off the neck at the backbone.

Roast

  1. Lay the grouse in a dripping pan with a little water.

  2. Baste the birds well while roasting for 30 to 35 minutes.

Serve

  1. Serve the grouse on buttered toast soaked in the dripping pan.

  2. Pour melted butter over the grouse or serve with bread sauce and gravy.

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 + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Butter + saucetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,338 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Bread + saucetop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,934 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

Butter and sauce barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 15,338 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

Grouse
The main meat, which cooks through in the oven and browns on the outside.
Butter
Basting keeps the lean birds moist and adds richness and browning to the skin.
Toast
Soaks up the pan juices, giving a moist, savoury base under the birds.

The step that matters

Baste the birds well while roasting. Grouse is lean and can dry out in the oven. Regular basting with butter keeps the flesh moist and helps the skin brown evenly.

“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.

You might also like

Brown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesWhite BreadWhite Bread80 recipesBread OmeletteBread Omelette60 recipesOatmeal BreadOatmeal Bread51 recipes