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Roasting Birds

Roasted game birds stuffed with shallots and butter or bacon, covered with bacon and buttered paper, served with gravy, bread crumbs, and bread sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Roasting Birds

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the birds

  1. Pluck, draw, singe, and truss the birds.

  2. Place 2 shallots and 1 ounce of butter or a roll of fat bacon inside each bird.

  3. Lay a broad slice of bacon over the breast and secure it with tapes.

  4. Cover the bird with buttered paper.

Roast and serve

  1. Roast the bird at 350°F (175°C), basting frequently with butter.

  2. A few minutes before done, remove the bacon slice to allow the breast to brown.

  3. Serve with plain brown gravy, fried bread crumbs, and bread sauce.

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 + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

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

  3. Shallot + saucetop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,303 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Shallot + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,426 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

Game birds
Provide the main meat, which cooks through during roasting and is served whole.
Shallots
Sit inside the bird, adding a mild aromatic flavour to the meat as it roasts.
Butter
Bastes the skin, adding moisture and helping it turn golden and crisp.
Bacon
Covers the breast to keep it moist, then is removed so the breast can brown.

The step that matters

Removing the bacon slice before the end. Removing the bacon a few minutes before done lets the breast skin brown and crisp. Leaving it on keeps the breast pale and soft.

Swap the shallot

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, bread, sauce):

  1. Shallotthe original
  2. Tomatofits about as well
  3. Capsicumfits less well
  4. Onionfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, bread, sauce. 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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