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Ortolans in Croustade

A dish of roasted ortolans stuffed with truffle, cooked with bacon, mirepoix, and Madeira wine, served in a bread croustade.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and celery match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,173 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Ortolans in Croustade

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the birds

  1. Pluck the ortolans.

  2. Singe the ortolans, removing the neck and gizzard.

  3. Season the birds with nutmeg, salt, and pepper.

  4. Hollow out the truffle.

  5. Place the bird inside the truffle.

Cook

  1. Arrange the truffle in a sauté pan with bacon over the breasts.

  2. Moisten with mirepoix and Madeira wine.

  3. Cook for about 20 minutes.

  4. Remove the birds.

  5. Remove the bacon.

  6. Reduce the sauce in the sauté pan to a demi-glaze.

Assemble and serve

  1. Place them in a fancy bread croustade.

  2. Mask the birds with the glaze.

  3. Serve surrounded with watercress.

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. Carrot + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Celery + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Carrot + peppertop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,555 recipes

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

  4. Carrot + nutmegtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,424 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  5. Onion + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Truffle
Perfumes the birds with its earthy aroma as it cooks around them.
Bacon
Bastes the birds with rendered fat and adds savoury, smoky flavour.
Madeira wine
Adds acidity and sweetness that, reduced, builds the rich demi-glaze.
Mirepoix
Flavours the cooking liquid, forming the base of the sauce.

The step that matters

Reduce the sauce to a demi-glaze. Reducing concentrates the liquid's sugars and flavours and thickens it through evaporation. Too little reduction leaves a thin sauce that will not coat the birds, while over-reduction makes it salty and sticky.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (truffle, carrot, celery, madeira wine, nutmeg, pepper, watercress):

  1. Turnipfits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Spinachfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against truffle, carrot, celery, madeira wine, nutmeg, pepper, watercress. 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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