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A Salmi

A stew of pheasant, partridges, or wild ducks with broth, wine, onions, herbs, and fried bread.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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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 ↓

A Salmi

Ingredients

Directions

Make the stew

  1. Remove the flesh from the bodies of the birds and beat it in a mortar, moistening with broth or gravy.

  2. Pass the mixture through a sieve into a stewpan.

  3. Add butter, wine, onions, and sweet herbs.

  4. Boil for 30 minutes.

  5. Stir in sweet oil and lemon juice. If using partridges, substitute oranges for lemon.

Prepare the legs and wings

  1. In another pan, stew the legs and wings in butter rolled in flour, seasoned with pepper and salt, without boiling.

Assemble and serve

  1. Cut bread into triangles.

  2. Fry the bread triangles in butter.

  3. Layer the fried bread in a dish.

  4. Place the legs and wings on top.

  5. Add the stew.

  6. Garnish with notched lemon slices around the edge.

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. Walnut + lemontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,149 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Walnut + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,873 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Butter + port winetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,499 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

Birds (flesh of pheasants, partridges, or wild ducks)
Provide the main meat, which is pounded and sieved to thicken and enrich the stew.
Onions
Add savoury sweetness and aromatic depth to the stew as it simmers.
Port wine or claret
Adds acidity and fruity depth, and helps flavour the boiled stew.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich, meaty stew.
Butter rolled in flour
Coats the legs and wings, giving a thickened, rich, silky sauce.

The step that matters

Stewing the legs and wings without boiling. Boiling toughens meat proteins and can make the pieces dry and stringy, so they should simmer gently instead.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pheasant, butter, walnut, flour, port wine, onion, bread):

  1. Figfits better
  2. Pearfits better
  3. Plumfits about as well
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pheasant, butter, walnut, flour, port wine, onion, 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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