Name: To Preserve Birds
Ingredients: chickens, ducks, geese, turkeys, partridges, pheasants, prairie hens, quails; melted butter or lard

Why it works: Pheasant and quail share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 48 recipes. Both carry decanal, which smells soap, orange peel. The science ↓

To Preserve Birds

Ingredients

chickens, ducks, geese, turkeys, partridges, pheasants, prairie hens, quails
melted butter or lard

Directions

Broil or roast the birds according to your preferred method.
Carve the cooked birds and remove the bones.
Place the meat in a crockery pot and cover it with melted butter or lard.
Let it cool and store the pot in a cool, dry place.
When ready to eat, take out the desired amount and fry it in the surrounding butter or lard until warm.

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.

Pheasant + quailtop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together48 recipes

Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).
Turkey + pheasanttop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together33 recipes

Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).
Turkey + quailtop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together28 recipes

Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).
Chicken + turkeytop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together688 recipes

Shared aroma: (z)-4-decenal (green, must).
Chicken + pheasanttop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together130 recipes

Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).