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Roast Larded Grouse, Game Sauce

Roast grouse served with a sauce made from its drippings, espagnole, broth, port wine, shallots, bay leaf, and thyme.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Shallot and thyme match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,476 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Roast Larded Grouse, Game Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the grouse

  1. Pick, singe, draw, and dress the grouse.

  2. Stiffen the breast before a brisk fire and lard it.

Roast and serve

  1. Roast the grouse until rather rare.

  2. Dish the grouse on dry toast.

Make the game sauce

  1. In a saucepan, combine drippings, game bones, espagnole sauce, broth, port wine, shallots, bay leaf, and thyme.

  2. Boil slowly for 30 minutes, skim the fat, strain, and reduce to desired consistency.

  3. Serve the grouse with the game sauce in a sauce-bowl.

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. Shallot + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,476 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  2. Port wine + shallottop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together380 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  4. Sauce + shallottop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,303 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Butter + saucetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,338 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

Butter and sauce barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 15,338 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

Grouse
Forms the main dish; its breast is larded to keep the lean meat moist.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and helps the lean grouse brown and stay tender.
Espagnole sauce
Provides the thick, savoury base that gives the game sauce body.
Port wine
Adds sweetness and depth, balancing the savoury, meaty flavour of the sauce.
Shallots
Add a mild, aromatic onion flavour that builds the sauce's background.

The step that matters

Roasting the grouse until rather rare. Grouse is very lean and dries out quickly when overcooked. Stopping at rather rare keeps the meat juicy and tender, since it continues to firm slightly after leaving the heat.

Swap the thyme

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, sauce, port wine, shallot):

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Tarragonfits better
  3. Parsleyfits about as well
  4. Thymethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, sauce, port wine, shallot. 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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