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To Boil Pheasants

Pheasants boiled and served with a cream and celery sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Celery and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,467 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

To Boil Pheasants

Ingredients

Directions

Boil the pheasants

  1. Boil the pheasants in plenty of water for 30 minutes if small, or 45 minutes if large.

Make the celery sauce

  1. Finely chop the celery.

  2. Stew the chopped celery with cream.

  3. Thicken the sauce with a small piece of butter rolled in flour.

Serve

  1. Once the pheasants are done, pour the sauce over them.

  2. Garnish with slices of lemon.

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. Celery + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,467 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  3. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Pheasant + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together225 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetaldehyde (pungent, ethereal).

  5. Celery + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,905 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Pheasants
Provide the main meat, which becomes tender through long gentle boiling.
Heads of celery
Add a fresh, aromatic flavour to the cream sauce as it stews.
Cream
Adds richness and body to the celery sauce.
Butter
Adds fat and richness to the sauce, and with flour helps thicken it.
Flour
Thickens the sauce when rolled with butter and stirred in.

The step that matters

Thicken the sauce with a small piece of butter rolled in flour. Adding the butter and flour mixture gradually lets starch thicken the sauce smoothly, while stirring prevents lumps. Adding it all at once can leave clumps of raw flour.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pheasant, celery, cream, butter, flour):

  1. Lemonthe original
  2. Raisinfits about as well
  3. Coconutfits less well
  4. Avocadofits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against pheasant, celery, cream, butter, flour. 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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