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Salmi of Grouse

A sauce of butter, onion, celery, ham, flour, stock, salt, cayenne, and sherry wine served over roasted grouse.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and celery are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 18,518 recipes. Both carry guaiacol, which smells smoky, sweet. The science ↓

Salmi of Grouse

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the sauce

  1. Cut cold roast grouse into pieces for serving.

  2. Melt the butter in a pan, then add the onion, celery, and chopped ham. Cook until the butter is brown.

  3. Stir in the flour and cook until well browned.

  4. Add the brown stock and season with salt and cayenne. Cook for 5 minutes, then strain the sauce.

Finish and serve

  1. Add the grouse to the sauce and heat until the meat is warm.

  2. Arrange the grouse on a serving dish and pour the sherry wine sauce over it.

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  4. Butter + sherrytop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,505 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  5. Ham + sherrytop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together377 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-ethyl-2-methoxyphenol (smoky, clove).

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

Butter
Browns with the flour and aromatics, giving the sauce a rich, nutty flavor and body.
Flour
Thickens the sauce as it cooks and browns, giving it body and color.
Brown stock
Forms the liquid base of the sauce, carrying the savory flavor.
Sherry wine
Adds acidity and aromatic depth to the finished sauce.

The step that matters

Browning the flour. Flour must cook until well browned to remove raw starch taste and build color and nutty flavor. Stopping early leaves the sauce pale and floury, while overcooking can scorch it and make it bitter.

Swap the celery

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, onion, ham, flour, sherry, wine):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Garlicfits better
  3. Capersfits about as well
  4. Celerythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, onion, ham, flour, sherry, 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.

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