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Roast Prairie Chickens or Grouse

Roast prairie chickens or grouse seasoned with salt, pepper, butter, and optional fat salt pork, baked in gravy or wine and water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Chicken and pork match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,417 recipes. Both carry 2-furfurylthiol, which smells coffee, roasted. The science ↓

Roast Prairie Chickens or Grouse

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Pluck and singe the birds, then wipe them with a wet towel.

  2. Draw the birds and season the inside with salt and pepper.

  3. Place 1 tablespoon of butter inside each bird and sew up the openings.

  4. Truss the birds and lay them in a dripping pan.

  5. Add 1 cup of gravy or broth, or ½ cup of wine and ½ cup of water to the pan.

Roast and serve

  1. Bake at 400°F (200°C) for 1 hour for large birds, less for small ones.

  2. When they begin to brown, season with salt and pepper and rub a little butter over them.

  3. Serve with currant jelly or the gravy from the pan, removing excess grease.

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. Chicken + porktop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,417 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

  2. Butter + porktop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,933 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

  3. Butter + winetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,645 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

  4. Chicken + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,902 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

  5. Pepper + porktop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,121 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Prairie chickens or grouse
Provide the lean meat that is roasted whole and carved for serving.
Butter
Adds richness and moisture inside the birds and helps the skin brown when rubbed on.
Gravy or broth
Keeps the pan moist during roasting and forms the base for the serving gravy.

The step that matters

Roasting time for the birds. Overcooking dries out lean game meat, while undercooking leaves it unsafe. Size changes the time, so check the birds as they near done rather than relying only on the clock.

“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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