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Grouse Braised, and Cabbage

A braised grouse cooked with cabbage, stock, herbs, and bacon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Thyme and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,057 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Grouse Braised, and Cabbage

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Draw the legs of the grouse as you would for boiling.

  2. Lay some fat bacon at the bottom of a stewpan.

  3. Add 1 pint of stock, shallots, thyme, parsley, mace, and bay leaves.

  4. Place the grouse in the stewpan.

Prepare the cabbage

  1. Blanch the cabbages, then cut the blanched cabbages into quarters.

  2. Boil the cabbage quarters until half done.

  3. Squeeze each cabbage part with your hands, then press the squeezed cabbage parts with a cloth.

  4. Tie each cabbage bundle separately.

Braise and finish

  1. Add the tied cabbage bundles to the pan with the grouse.

  2. Simmer over low heat for about an hour, or less if the grouse is young.

  3. Strain off the liquor and remove the fat.

  4. Melt butter in the pan, then add flour to the melted butter to dry it up.

  5. Mix the flour mixture with the liquor.

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. Thyme + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Shallot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,737 recipes

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

  3. Shallot + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,476 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Shallot + flourtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,081 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Parsley + cabbagetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together660 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Grouse
Provides the main meat, which becomes tender through slow simmering in the stock.
Fat bacon
Melts into the braising liquid, adding fat and savoury flavour to the dish.
Cabbages
Absorb the braising liquid and add bulk and a mild, sweet vegetable flavour.
Flour
Thickens the strained liquor when cooked in melted butter, giving the sauce body.
Butter
Enriches the sauce with fat and helps the flour cook into a smooth thickener.

The step that matters

Simmering the grouse gently. Low, slow heat keeps the meat tender and prevents the proteins from tightening and toughening. Boiling hard would make the grouse dry and stringy.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (shallot, thyme, parsley, cabbage, butter, flour):

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Tarragonfits better
  3. Marjoramfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against shallot, thyme, parsley, cabbage, 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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