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Salmi of Woodcocks

A stew of woodcock pieces simmered with cullis, shallots, Port wine, lemon peel, and seasonings, served with fried bread.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Salmi of Woodcocks

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the half-roasted woodcocks into neat pieces.

  2. Pound the trimmings and entrails in a mortar.

Make the sauce

  1. In a stewpan, combine the pounded mixture, cullis, chopped shallots, Port wine, and lemon peel.

  2. Season with pepper, coarse sea salt, and lemon juice.

  3. Boil the mixture for 10 minutes.

Stew and serve

  1. Strain the liquid over the carved woodcocks and stew gently until cooked.

  2. Place the dish in a pan of boiling water over the fire to keep warm.

  3. Serve in a deep dish, garnished with sippets of fried bread.

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

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

  2. Shallot + lemontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,523 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Shallot + port winetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together380 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  4. Shallot + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,898 recipes

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

  5. Shallot + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,245 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Woodcocks
Provide the main meat, which is cooked gently in the sauce until tender.
Cullis
Forms the rich sauce base that gives the stew body and savoury depth.
Port wine
Adds sweetness and acidity, deepening the flavour of the sauce as it reduces.
Shallots
Add a mild aromatic sweetness that builds flavour in the sauce.

The step that matters

Boiling the sauce before straining and stewing. Boiling for 10 minutes concentrates and blends the flavours of the trimmings, wine and cullis. Boiling too long or too hard can over-reduce the sauce and make it salty or thick, so watch it closely.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sauce, shallot, port wine, pepper, bread):

  1. Lemonthe original
  2. Figfits about as well
  3. Red currantfits about as well
  4. Plumfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against sauce, shallot, port wine, pepper, bread. 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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