Skip to main content
Main

Pheasants

Pheasants stuffed with a mixture of liver, bacon, mushrooms, herbs, and wine, then braised in a Spanish sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 23 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Parsley and carrot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,053 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Pheasants

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the pheasants

  1. Singe, prick, and draw the pheasants.

  2. Mince the livers with butter, bacon, champignons, truffles, parsley, green onions, pepper, salt, sweet herbs, and fine spice.

  3. Stuff the mixture into the pheasants and tie them at both ends.

  4. Blanch the pheasants in a stew-pan.

  5. Wrap the blanched pheasants in bacon and tie with paper.

Make the sauce

  1. In a stew-pan, heat oil and sauté the sliced onion and chopped carrot.

  2. Moisten with gravy, cullis, and essence of ham.

  3. Add lemon slices, garlic, basil, thyme, bay leaf, parsley, green onions, and white wine.

  4. If available, pound pheasant carcasses and add to the sauce; otherwise, pound the reserved livers after removing the gall.

  5. Skim the cullis and ensure it tastes good, then strain it.

Serve

  1. Once the pheasants are cooked, remove the bacon and serve with the Spanish 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. Parsley + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

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

  2. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  3. Pepper + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,555 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  4. Onion + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  5. Parsley + oniontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 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

Pheasants
Provide the main meat, which is stuffed, wrapped and cooked whole.
Bacon
Wraps the birds, adding fat and savoury flavour as it renders during cooking.
Champignons
Add earthy, savoury flavour and moisture to the stuffing.
White wine
Adds acidity and aroma to the sauce as it simmers.
Onion
Builds sweetness and savoury depth in the sauce base as it softens.
Lemon
Adds acidity and brightness to the sauce.

The step that matters

Skim the cullis before straining. Skimming removes fat and impurities that rise to the surface, so the sauce stays clean-tasting and clear once strained.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pheasant, butter, truffle, parsley, pepper, carrot, ham):

  1. Leekfits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Potatofits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pheasant, butter, truffle, parsley, pepper, carrot, ham. 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.

You might also like

Lemon SauceLemon Sauce236 recipesCarrot SoupCarrot Soup134 recipesPheasant SoupPheasant Soup25 recipesTomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipes