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Salmis of Pheasant, a LA Bourguignotte

A sauce made from roasted pheasant, shallots, spices, claret, consommé, and Espagnole, served with truffles, mushrooms, onions, and quenelles.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 ingredients
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Why it works: Shallot and thyme match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,476 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Salmis of Pheasant, a LA Bourguignotte

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the pheasant

  1. Let the roasted pheasant cool.

  2. Remove the legs and cut off the fillets with the pinion bones attached.

  3. Separate the breast from the back, trim both, and cut them crosswise into halves.

  4. Place all pieces in a stewpan.

Make the sauce

  1. Chop the trimmings and add to the stewpan with shallots, bay leaf, thyme, peppercorns, mace, and butter.

  2. Fry over medium heat until slightly browned.

  3. Moisten with Claret or Burgundy and boil until reduced by half.

  4. Add white consommé and simmer for 15 minutes.

  5. Strain the mixture into a stewpan with Espagnole sauce, clarify, and reduce.

Finish and serve

  1. Pour one-third of the sauce over the pheasant and keep the rest warm with mushrooms, truffles, onions, and quenelles.

  2. Warm the pheasant pieces without boiling, then arrange them on a plate.

  3. Garnish with the ragout, croutons, and pour the remaining sauce over the dish.

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 + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,476 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

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

  3. Mushroom + truffletop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,900 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

  4. Thyme + mushroomtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  5. Butter + mushroomtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Pheasant
Provides the main meat, which is cut into pieces and gently warmed in the sauce.
Espagnole sauce
Forms the thick brown sauce base that coats the pheasant and gives body and savoury depth.
Claret or burgundy
Adds acidity and wine flavour as it reduces into the sauce.
Butter
Adds fat and richness and helps brown the trimmings and aromatics at the start.
White consommé
Adds savoury liquid that extends the reduction and carries the flavour of the trimmings.
Shallots
Add a mild aromatic sweetness that builds flavour in the sauce base.

The step that matters

Warm the pheasant pieces without boiling. Boiling toughens the protein in the meat and can make it dry and stringy, so the pieces should only be heated gently in the sauce.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pheasant, shallot, thyme, butter, sauce, mushroom, truffle):

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Tarragonfits better
  3. Parsleyfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pheasant, shallot, thyme, butter, sauce, mushroom, truffle. 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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