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Salmi of Game

A stew of roasted game meat simmered with onions, spices, and veal gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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 ↓

Salmi of Game

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the stock

  1. Carve the game neatly and remove all skin and fat from the legs, wings, and breasts.

  2. Bruise the bodies and place them in a clean stewpan with the skin and trimmings.

  3. Add the sliced onions, bay leaf, mace, and peppercorns.

  4. Pour in the veal gravy or broth and boil briskly until reduced by half.

  5. Strain the gravy, pressing the bones to extract all flavor, and skim off the fat.

Finish and serve

  1. Add cayenne and lemon juice, then heat the game gradually without boiling.

  2. Arrange fried bread around a dish.

  3. Place the game in the center.

  4. Boil the sauce.

  5. Pour it over the game.

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

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

  3. Onion + breadtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,676 recipes

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

  4. Mace + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,257 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  5. Pepper + breadtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,964 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Mace and pepper barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 12,257 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

Onions
Soften and sweeten as they cook, adding savory depth to the gravy.
Veal gravy or broth
Forms the liquid base of the sauce, carrying flavor and body.
Remains of roasted game
Supplies the main meat and the concentrated flavor that the sauce draws from.

The step that matters

Heat the game gradually without boiling. Boiling toughens cooked meat by tightening its proteins and squeezing out juices, so the game should be warmed slowly in the sauce.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (onion, veal, pepper, lemon, bread):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, veal, pepper, lemon, bread. 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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