Skip to main content
Main

Pheasant En Surprise

Pheasant served in a creamy aspic jelly, garnished with chervil leaves.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Cream and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Pheasant En Surprise

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the pheasant

  1. Remove the skin and meat from the pheasant, discarding any gristle.

  2. In a mortar, combine the pheasant meat with half of the cream and pound together for a few minutes.

  3. Rub the mixture through a clean wire sieve back into the mortar.

  4. Gradually add the remaining cream, stirring until well blended.

Fill and cook

  1. Fill a mold with the mixture and cover the top with buttered paper.

  2. Place a folded sheet of paper in a stewpan, add about ½ pint of boiling water, and simmer for 20 minutes.

Season and set

  1. Add salt and cayenne pepper to the mixture.

  2. Mix in the white aspic jelly.

  3. Color a portion of clear aspic jelly red and pour it into a jelly mold, filling it to just over a quarter full.

  4. Once cool, add the pheasant and aspic mixture, then place on ice for 4 hours.

Serve

  1. When set, turn out the jelly and garnish with fresh chervil leaves.

  2. Serve with chopped aspic and mounds of mayonnaise salad or tomatoes.

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. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Pepper + cherviltop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together867 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Pheasant + creamtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together112 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

  4. Pheasant + cherviltop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12 recipes

    Shared aroma: geraniol (rose, geranium).

  5. Cream + cherviltop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together288 recipes

    Shared aroma: octanal (fat, soap).

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

What each ingredient does

Pheasant
Provides the main meat that the jelly is built around.
Cream
Adds richness and a soft, smooth texture to the pounded meat.
White aspic jelly
Sets the mixture into a firm jelly that holds its shape when chilled.

The step that matters

Let the aspic cool before adding the meat. Aspic is gelatin, which sets as it cools. If the aspic is still warm when the pheasant mixture goes in, the layers can blend and the jelly may not set firmly. Chilling for the full time then gives a firm, sliceable result.

Swap the chervil

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pheasant, cream, pepper, butter):

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Parsleyfits better
  4. Chervilthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pheasant, cream, pepper, butter. 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.

You might also like

Pheasant SoupPheasant Soup25 recipesTomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipes