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Bruants Sautes Au Beurre--reed Birds Sauted in Butter

Sautéed reed birds served on toast with butter and parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and parsley are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 28,563 recipes. Both carry trans-2-hexenal, which smells green, leafy. The science ↓

Bruants Sautes Au Beurre--reed Birds Sauted in Butter

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Clean the birds and remove the stomach.

  2. Season the birds with coarse sea salt.

Cook and serve

  1. Sauté the birds in butter over a very hot fire, leaving them slightly underdone.

  2. Place the birds on small pieces of toast.

  3. Remove half of the butter used for cooking and replace it with fresh butter.

  4. Heat the fresh butter until it is nut brown, then pour it over the birds.

  5. Sprinkle with freshly chopped parsley and 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. Butter + parsleytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together28,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

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

What each ingredient does

Reed birds
Form the main body of the dish, cooked quickly so the flesh stays tender.
Butter
Conducts heat for sautéing and, browned, adds nutty flavour and aroma.
Small pieces of toast
Hold the birds up and soak up the buttery juices beneath them.

The step that matters

Sautéing the birds slightly underdone. Over a very hot fire the birds cook fast, so pulling them while still slightly underdone keeps the meat moist and prevents it from drying out or toughening as it rests and finishes cooking.

“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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