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To Roast Partridges, Pheasants, Quails or Grouse

A method for roasting partridges, pheasants, quails or grouse with salt, pepper, optional fat pork, butter and water, served with gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Pheasant and pork work together. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 240 recipes. Both carry decanal, which smells soap, orange peel. The science ↓

To Roast Partridges, Pheasants, Quails or Grouse

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 the bird

  1. Remove all shot from the bird.

  2. Wash the bird thoroughly with water and soda, then rinse it.

  3. Dry the bird with a clean cloth.

  4. Stuff the bird.

  5. Sew it up.

  6. Skewer the legs and wings to the body.

  7. Lard the breast with thin slices of fat salt pork, if using.

  8. Season the bird with coarse sea salt and black pepper before cooking.

Roast

  1. Place the bird in the oven at 400°F (200°C).

  2. Baste the bird with butter and water.

Make the gravy

  1. Make gravy from the drippings.

  2. Thicken the gravy with browned flour.

  3. Boil the gravy.

  4. Serve the gravy in a boat.

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. Pheasant + porktop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together240 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  2. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Pork + buttertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,933 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

  4. Pheasant + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together225 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetaldehyde (pungent, ethereal).

  5. Pepper + porktop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,121 recipes

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

Butter and flour 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

Butter
Adds fat and flavour to the skin and helps it brown during roasting.
Browned flour
Thickens the drippings into a gravy and adds a toasted, nutty flavour.
Fat salt pork
Adds fat that keeps the lean breast meat moist and flavourful while roasting.

The step that matters

Place the bird in the oven at 400°F (200°C). Lean game birds dry out quickly at high heat, so the bird must be watched closely and basted to keep the meat moist while the skin browns.

“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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