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Menu for a Party of Eight

Roasted snipe and wild pigeons served with a rich sauce and liver paste.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 18 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lime match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,491 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Menu for a Party of Eight

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the birds

  1. Roast the birds slightly.

  2. Detach the meat from their breasts.

  3. Set the meat aside.

Make the sauce

  1. Use the bones and scraps with ½ pint of gravy and mushroom liquor, lean bacon, chopped onion, spiced pepper, sweet herbs, and grated lime peel to make a strong game essence.

  2. Strain the essence, thicken it with butter and flour, and reduce to make a rich sauce.

  3. Add red currant jelly, red wine, and a little vinegar.

Make the liver paste

  1. Chop the livers of the birds and rabbit into dice with fat bacon and minced shallot.

  2. Toss in a frying pan for 3 minutes.

  3. Pound the mixture into a paste, mixing in a tablespoon of minced truffle trimmings and spiced pepper.

  4. Cut the saved breast meat into dice.

Assemble and serve

  1. Pack buttered paper or china cases with a mixture of sauce, meat, and liver paste.

  2. Dredge crumbs over the surface of each case and place them in the oven until hot.

  3. Serve.

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. Pepper + limetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,491 recipes

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

  2. Lime + red curranttop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together59 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  3. Mushroom + red winetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together720 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methoxy-4-methylphenol (smoky, clove).

  4. Mushroom + oniontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,626 recipes

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

  5. Red wine + vinegartop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together575 recipes

    Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).

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

What each ingredient does

Snipe and wild pigeons
Provide the main meat, which is cut from the breasts and set aside for the cases.
Livers of the birds
Pounded into a paste, they give the filling a rich, smooth, savoury body.
Red currant jelly
Adds sweetness and a fruity sharpness that balances the rich game sauce.
Red wine
Adds acidity and depth of flavour as the sauce is finished.
Butter and flour
Together thicken the strained essence into a smooth, rich sauce.

The step that matters

Thickening and reducing the sauce. Flour must be cooked smoothly into the butter and liquid, or it forms lumps. Reducing slowly concentrates flavour without scorching, so the sauce stays glossy and does not turn bitter.

Swap the red currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (mushroom, onion, pepper, lime, red wine, vinegar, liver):

  1. Plumfits better
  2. Lemonfits better
  3. Avocadofits about as well
  4. Red currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mushroom, onion, pepper, lime, red wine, vinegar, liver. 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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