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To Roast Wild Fowl

A method for roasting wild fowl with onion, salt pork, butter, drippings, flour, and garnishes of bread, lemon, parsley, and currant jelly.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

To Roast Wild Fowl

Ingredients

Directions

Roast the birds

  1. Put the onion and hot water into a pan and baste for 10 to 15 minutes.

  2. Change the pan and add the slice of salt pork.

  3. Baste frequently with butter and pork drippings.

  4. Just before serving, lightly dredge with flour and baste again.

  5. Roast ducks for 25 to 35 minutes.

  6. Roast woodcock or snipe for 15 to 25 minutes.

  7. Do not draw or remove the heads of the birds.

Serve

  1. Garnish with fried or toasted bread, lemon, parsley, and currant jelly.

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. Lemon + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  3. Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  4. Onion + porktop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,214 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

Butter
Adds fat and flavour, and helps the birds brown while basting.
Pork drippings
Adds fat and savoury flavour, and keeps the surface moist while roasting.
Flour
Dusted on at the end, it helps form a light browned crust.
Salt pork
Adds fat and savoury flavour as it renders during roasting.

The step that matters

Basting frequently with fat. Basting keeps the surface of the birds moist and helps them brown evenly. Lean game dries out quickly in a hot oven, so the fat must be spooned over regularly throughout roasting.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (onion, pork, butter, flour, bread, lemon, parsley):

  1. Avocadofits better
  2. Limefits better
  3. Coconutfits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, pork, butter, flour, bread, lemon, parsley. 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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