Skip to main content
Main

Scollops of Pheasants. Escalopes De Faisans.

Pheasant fillets sautéed in butter, seasoned with salt and pepper, and finished in a reduced espagnole sauce with fumet.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Butter and sauce are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 15,338 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Scollops of Pheasants. Escalopes De Faisans.

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the pheasant wings into equal-sized fillets.

  2. Melt a little butter in a sauté pan.

  3. Arrange the fillets in the pan.

  4. Dust with salt and pepper, then baste with melted butter.

Make the sauce

  1. Make a fumet from the pheasant remains.

  2. Add 3 large spoonfuls of espagnole sauce.

  3. Reduce the sauce to half glaze.

  4. Toss the fillets in the sauce.

  5. Drain off excess butter, keeping the juice.

  6. Add the juice back to the sauce.

  7. Finish with a pat of butter.

  8. Add truffles if desired.

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. Butter + saucetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,338 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Pheasant + saucetop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together290 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanoic acid (soapy, waxy).

  3. Pheasant + peppertop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together462 recipes

    Shared aroma: sabinene (woody, terpenic).

  4. Pheasant + buttertop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together511 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

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

Butter and sauce barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 15,338 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Pheasant
Provides the lean meat that forms the escalopes.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, and helps the fillets brown in the pan.
Espagnole sauce
Forms the base of the sauce, adding body and savoury depth.

The step that matters

Reduce the sauce to half glaze. Reducing concentrates the flavour and thickens the sauce so it coats the fillets. If reduced too far it can turn overly salty or sticky, so watch it closely.

“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.

You might also like

Pheasant SoupPheasant Soup25 recipesTomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipes