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Prairie Chickens-steamed and Baked

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Sage and summer savory match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 237 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Prairie Chickens-steamed and Baked

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.

  1. Clean the prairie chickens and stuff them with a mixture of bread crumbs, coarse sea salt, pepper, and melted butter. Add sage, onion, or summer savory if desired.

  2. Secure the chickens with a needle and twine.

  3. Steam the chickens in a steamer until tender.

  4. Transfer to a dripping pan, dredge with flour and pepper, and brown delicately in a 400°F (200°C) oven.

  5. Baste with melted butter and garnish with parsley and lumps of currant jelly.

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. Sage + summer savorytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together237 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Pepper + sagetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,388 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  3. Summer savory + flourtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together263 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Pepper + summer savorytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together671 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  5. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

Swap the sage

The recipe marks sage as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicken, bread, pepper, butter, onion, summer savory, flour):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Marjoramfits about as well
  3. Parsleyfits about as well
  4. Sagethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, bread, pepper, butter, onion, summer savory, flour. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

More prairie chicken recipes

Roasted 12Stew 8Roast 7Broiled 5Fried 4Stewed 4 See all 10 →

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