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Phbasant and Macaroni

A baked dish of game meat and macaroni in a mushroom ketchup and sherry sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 ingredients
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Why it works: Shallot and mushroom are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,982 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Phbasant and Macaroni

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. Chop the game meat into dice.

Make the sauce

  1. Combine bones, trimmings, gravy, water to cover, onion, parsley, bay leaf, and carrot in a pot and cook slowly.

  2. For each ½ pound of meat, add shallots, salt, pepper, nutmeg, mushroom ketchup, and sherry.

  3. Strain the sauce.

  4. Mix flour and butter into the strained sauce.

Cook the macaroni

  1. Cook macaroni in stock until tender.

Bake and serve

  1. Combine macaroni with the sauce and place in a baking dish.

  2. Bake at 400°F (200°C) until heated through.

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. Shallot + mushroomtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,982 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  2. Shallot + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,019 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Mushroom + sherrytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,176 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methoxy-4-methylphenol (smoky, clove).

  4. Shallot + flourtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,081 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

What each ingredient does

Game meat
Supplies the main meaty flavour and protein that firms up as it cooks.
Flour
Thickens the strained sauce so it coats the macaroni.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, giving the sauce a smoother, silkier body.
Macaroni
Provides starchy bulk that soaks up the sauce as it bakes.
Sherry
Adds acidity and aromatic depth to the sauce.

The step that matters

Mixing flour and butter into the strained sauce. Flour thickens only when its starch is evenly dispersed and heated in liquid. Adding it unevenly or without enough cooking can leave lumps or a thin, raw-tasting sauce.

Swap the nutmeg

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (meat, shallot, pepper, mushroom, ketchup, sherry, flour):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Capersfits better
  3. Marjoramfits better
  4. Nutmegthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, shallot, pepper, mushroom, ketchup, sherry, flour. 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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