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Pheasants and Partridges

Roasted pheasants or partridges with a gravy made from mutton, lemon pickle, catsup, and browning.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and butter 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 ↓

Pheasants and Partridges

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. Preheat your oven to 400°F (200°C).

  2. Spit the pheasants or partridges and dust them with flour.

Roast

  1. Baste them often with fresh butter while keeping them at a distance from the fire.

  2. Roast for about 30 minutes.

Make the gravy and serve

  1. For the gravy, place the mutton in a saucepan with lemon pickle, catsup, and browning.

  2. Strain the gravy and serve a little with the birds, keeping the remainder in a separate bowl.

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. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Pheasant + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together225 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetaldehyde (pungent, ethereal).

  3. Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  4. Butter + muttontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,781 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  5. Flour + lemontop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,404 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter 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

Pheasants or partridges
Provide the main meat, which is cooked by dry roasting over indirect heat.
Flour
Dusted on the birds to help form a light coating that promotes browning.
Fresh butter
Basting adds moisture and fat to the skin, encouraging golden browning and flavour.
Mutton
Simmered with the seasonings to build the body and savoury flavour of the gravy.

The step that matters

Basting the birds often. Lean game birds dry out easily. Regular basting with butter keeps the surface moist and helps it brown evenly, while distance from the fire prevents scorching before the inside is cooked.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pheasant, flour, butter, mutton):

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Coconutfits about as well
  3. Lemonthe original
  4. Applefits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against pheasant, flour, butter, mutton. 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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