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Roast Grouse

Roasted grouse wrapped in corned ham, seasoned with soda, butter, and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Roast Grouse

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Clean the grouse.

  2. Rinse it well with soda and water, then rinse it with pure water.

  3. Wipe the inside and outside of the grouse.

Roast

  1. Cover the grouse with thin slices of corned ham, using more fat than lean.

  2. Bind the ham to the grouse with soft twine or narrow tape.

  3. Pour 1 cup of boiling water over the grouse.

  4. Roast for 40 minutes, basting with the gravy in the pan three times.

  5. Remove the ham.

Finish

  1. Wash the grouse with butter.

  2. Dredge with flour.

  3. Brown while making the gravy.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Ham + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,475 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

  3. Ham + flourtop 33% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

Grouse
Is the main protein, cooked whole and basted with its own gravy.
Corned ham
Wraps the bird, adding fat and salty flavor as it roasts.
Butter
Adds fat and helps the surface brown richly.
Flour
Dusted on the surface, it helps the skin brown and thicken the gravy.

The step that matters

Brown while making the gravy. Browning needs dry, hot surface contact; if the bird is wet or the heat is low, it steams instead of browning. Flour and butter on the surface help it colour evenly.

“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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