Name: To Roast Reed-birds, or Ortolans
Ingredients: 1 oyster or 1 teaspoon butter per bird; flour for dredging; lard or fresh butter for basting; vine leaves (optional); string (optional)

Why it works: Flour and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

To Roast Reed-birds, or Ortolans

Ingredients

1 oyster or 1 teaspoon butter per bird
flour for dredging
lard or fresh butter for basting
vine leaves (optional)
string (optional)

Directions

Prepare the birds

Stuff each bird with an oyster or a little butter mixed with finely sifted bread crumbs.
Dredge the birds with flour.
Run a small skewer through each bird and tie them on a spit.

Roast

Baste the birds with lard or fresh butter.
Roast for about 10 minutes.

Alternative method

For an alternative method, grease the birds with lard or butter, wrap them in vine leaves, and secure with string.
Place the wrapped birds in a heated iron pan and bury them in hot ashes.
Remove the vine leaves before serving.

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.

Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together124,287 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Oyster + buttertop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together8,184 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, green).
Oyster + flourtop 25% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together4,582 recipes

Shared aroma: hexanal (grass, green).

Flour and butter 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

Oyster or butter: Adds fat and moisture inside each bird as it cooks.
Flour: Forms a dry coating on the outside that helps the skin brown.
Lard or butter: Fat brushed over the birds keeps the surface from drying and promotes 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.