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Woodcock Roasted

Roasted woodcock wrapped in pork or bacon, served on buttered toast with liver paste and garnished with watercress or parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and watercress work together. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 983 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Woodcock Roasted

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a hot oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the birds

  1. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).

  2. Cut off the feet and tie the legs close to the body.

  3. Skin the head and neck, then tie the peak under the wings.

  4. Wrap the woodcock with thin slices of pork or bacon.

Roast

  1. Bake in the oven for 10 to 15 minutes, basting with butter.

Make the liver toast and serve

  1. Boil the hearts and livers in salted water, then pound to a paste.

  2. Season the paste with salt and pepper.

  3. Butter the toast and cover it with the liver paste.

  4. Place the woodcock on the toast and moisten with butter from the pan.

  5. Garnish with watercress or parsley.

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. Pepper + watercresstop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together983 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Pork + buttertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,933 recipes

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

  3. Pork + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,121 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  4. Pork + watercresstop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together318 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyraldehyde (malty, chocolate).

  5. Butter + peppertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Woodcock
Small game bird that forms the main cooked centrepiece of the dish.
Butter
Basting fat that keeps the surface moist and helps it brown in the oven.
Pork or bacon
Thin fatty wrap that bastes the bird and protects it from drying out.
Hearts and livers (in the method)
Rich, savoury base that is pounded into the paste spread on the toast.
Toast
Absorbent base that soaks up the liver paste and pan juices under the bird.

The step that matters

Basting while roasting. Woodcock is small and lean, so it dries out quickly in the oven. Basting with butter coats the surface, adding moisture and encouraging even browning during the short bake.

“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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