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Roasted Pheasants

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Nutmeg and mace are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,557 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Roasted Pheasants

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Prepare a stuffing by mixing chopped oysters with pepper, coarse sea salt, nutmeg, mace, sweet oil, and egg yolk.

  2. Fill the pheasants with the stuffing.

  3. Cover the pheasants with thin slices of bacon or cold ham.

  4. Wrap the pheasants in buttered sheets of white paper.

  5. Roast the wrapped pheasants until cooked through.

  6. Serve with oyster sauce.

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. Nutmeg + macetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

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

  3. Oyster + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,184 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, green).

  4. Oyster + hamtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together360 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  5. Oyster + eggtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,103 recipes

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

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

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (oyster, pepper, nutmeg, egg, ham, butter):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against oyster, pepper, nutmeg, egg, ham, butter. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

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