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To Boil a Pheasant

A boiled pheasant served with a celery and cream sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and celery 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 a Pheasant

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the pheasant

  1. Boil a fine pheasant in a large pot of water, keeping it boiling.

  2. Cook a small pheasant for 30 minutes or a large one for 45 minutes.

Make the sauce and serve

  1. For the sauce, stew celery and thicken it with cream and a piece of butter rolled in flour.

  2. Once the pheasant is cooked, remove it and pour the sauce over it.

  3. Garnish with 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. Lemon + celerytop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,467 recipes

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

  2. Walnut + celerytop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together852 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Cream + saucetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,787 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Walnut + lemontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,149 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Pheasant
Provides the main meat, which becomes tender through long gentle boiling.
Cream
Adds richness and body to the sauce.
Butter
Adds fat and flavour, and with flour helps thicken the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the butter and cream sauce as it cooks.
Celery
Adds aroma and savoury flavour to the sauce.

The step that matters

Keeping the pot boiling for the whole cooking time. If the water stops boiling, the pot cools and the pheasant cooks unevenly, so the meat can turn out tough or underdone near the bone. Maintaining a steady boil keeps the heat even through the full cooking time.

Swap the lemon

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

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

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