Skip to main content
Main

Salmie of Woodcocks

A stew of woodcocks simmered with stock, shallots, port wine, and orange.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Shallot and port wine work together. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 380 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-ol, which smells mushroom, earthy. The science ↓

Salmie of Woodcocks

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut up the woodcocks and place the legs, wings, and breasts in a stewpan.

  2. In another stewpan, combine the trimmings with a little stock, shallots, and port wine.

Make the stew

  1. Set the second stewpan on the fire and boil slowly for 30 minutes.

  2. Strain the mixture through a fine sieve into the stewpan with the woodcocks.

  3. Do not put the stewpan on the fire. Make the dish hot before serving.

  4. Squeeze an orange over the dish before serving.

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 + port winetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together380 recipes

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

  2. Shallot + orangetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together220 recipes

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

  3. Port wine + orangetop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together161 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Woodcocks
Form the main body of the stew as the meat being cooked.
Stock
Provides liquid that carries flavour from the trimmings into the stew.
Shallots
Add mild sweetness and aromatic depth to the cooking liquor.
Port wine
Adds sweetness and richness, and its alcohol helps extract flavour from the trimmings.
Orange
Adds bright acidity and aroma to finish the stew.

The step that matters

Do not put the stewpan on the fire. Make the dish hot before serving.. Once the stew is combined, boiling it again can toughen the meat and dull its flavour. Gentle heating just to serve keeps the woodcock tender and the sauce fresh.

Swap the orange

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

  1. Red currantfits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Plumfits better
  4. Orangethe original

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

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipesYorkshire PuddingYorkshire Pudding264 recipes