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Other Small Bird

Small birds wrapped in grapevine leaves or buttered paper, bacon, and served on bread with lemon juice and gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Other Small Bird

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the birds

  1. Pick, clean, and prepare the birds as directed for poultry.

  2. Wrap each bird in grapevine leaves or buttered paper, then in bacon slices, and tie with twine.

Roast

  1. Skewer the wrapped birds on a spit and roast over a slow fire, basting often with drippings for 10 to 15 minutes.

  2. Fry slices of bread in butter until golden and place on a dish.

  3. Place a bird on each slice of bread, mix lemon juice with the gravy, and pour over the birds.

  4. Serve hot without removing the leaves, paper, or bacon.

Alternative method

  1. For an alternative method, fry the birds in butter until golden, then remove them.

  2. Stir in flour until brown, then add salt, pepper, allspice, parsley, and white wine, and return the birds to simmer until cooked.

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. Lemon + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

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

  2. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  3. Allspice + parsleytop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,289 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  5. Pepper + allspicetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,395 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

What each ingredient does

Small birds
Provide the main meat, which is cooked whole and kept moist inside its wrapping.
Thin slices of bacon
Wrap the birds to add fat that bastes the meat and flavors it as it cooks.
Butter
Adds richness and promotes golden browning when frying the bread and birds.
Flour
Browns in the drippings and thickens the gravy so it clings to the birds.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich drippings and gravy.
White wine
Adds acidity and aroma to the simmering gravy.

The step that matters

Roasting over a slow fire with frequent basting. Slow heat and regular basting with drippings keep the small birds moist and prevent the bacon and wrapping from drying out before the meat is cooked through.

Swap the walnut

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (bread, butter, lemon, flour, pepper, allspice, parsley):

  1. Chickpeafits better
  2. Chestnutfits about as well
  3. Walnutthe original
  4. Almondfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, butter, lemon, flour, pepper, allspice, parsley. 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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