Skip to main content
Main

Roast Grouse

Roast grouse with butter, croutons, watercress, gravy, bread sauce, and browned buttered bread crumbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

Roast Grouse

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the birds

  1. Pluck, singe, and truss the grouse. Wipe them with a clean cloth.

  2. Put a piece of butter inside each bird.

Roast

  1. Roast the grouse in front of a quick fire or in the oven at 400°F (200°C) for 30 minutes, basting constantly.

  2. Remove the strings when cooked.

Serve

  1. Prepare croutons by cutting bread large enough to hold the birds, scooping out a little in the center, and frying until golden brown.

  2. Place the birds on the croutons on a dish and garnish with watercress.

  3. Serve with rich gravy, bread sauce, and browned buttered bread crumbs.

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. Egg + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Bread + watercresstop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together307 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

Grouse
Forms the main meat; its lean flesh cooks quickly and needs basting to stay moist.
Butter
Placed inside the birds, it melts during roasting to add moisture and richness to the meat.
Fried bread croutons
Soak up juices and fat from the birds, and their browned surface adds crisp contrast.
Gravy
Adds savory moisture and depth that complements the roasted game flavor.

The step that matters

Basting the grouse constantly during roasting. Grouse is lean and cooks fast, so frequent basting with its fat keeps the surface from drying out and helps it brown evenly.

“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

Brown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesWhite BreadWhite Bread80 recipesBread OmeletteBread Omelette60 recipesOatmeal BreadOatmeal Bread51 recipes