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Salmis of Snipes

Snipe halves served on toasted bread with a spiced stock sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Allspice and celery match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,422 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Salmis of Snipes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the snipe

  1. Lightly roast the snipes.

  2. Cut the roasted snipes in half.

  3. Place each half on a slice of toasted bread.

  4. Keep the toast very hot.

Make the sauce

  1. In a pot, combine stock, allspice, bay leaves, mace, onion, celery, and seasoning.

  2. Boil the mixture for 10 minutes.

  3. Thicken the sauce with a little roux.

  4. Add sherry and soy sauce to the sauce.

  5. Strain the sauce through a fine sieve.

Serve

  1. Arrange the snipe halves on the toast in a circle, overlapping them.

  2. Pour the boiling sauce over the snipe.

  3. Serve.

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. Allspice + celerytop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,422 recipes

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

  2. Onion + celerytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,518 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Allspice + macetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  4. Allspice + oniontop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,270 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Bread + sherrytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together682 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

What each ingredient does

Snipes
Provide the main meat, which is roasted lightly and served as the centrepiece.
Stock
Forms the liquid base of the sauce, carrying the flavour of the aromatics.
Roux
Thickens the sauce so it clings to the snipe and toast.
Sherry
Adds acidity and aromatic depth to the sauce.
Bread
Acts as a crisp, absorbent base that holds the snipe above the sauce.

The step that matters

Thicken the sauce with roux. Roux is flour cooked in fat, and it must be added to simmering liquid and cooked long enough to thicken smoothly without lumps or a raw floury taste. Adding sherry and soy sauce afterwards keeps their flavour bright.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (bread, allspice, onion, celery, sherry, sauce):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Clovefits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, allspice, onion, celery, sherry, sauce. 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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