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Roast Pheasants

Roast pheasant with bacon, served with watercress garnish and gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Pheasant and beef work together. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 131 recipes. Both carry decanal, which smells soap, orange peel. The science ↓

Roast Pheasants

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Draw, wipe, and singe the pheasant.

  2. Truss the pheasant and tie the bacon over the breast.

Roast and serve

  1. Roast the pheasant before a clear fire for 30 to 40 minutes.

  2. Remove the bacon, garnish with watercresses, and serve with gravy.

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. Pheasant + beeftop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together131 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  2. Pheasant + watercresstop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together23 recipes

    Shared aroma: geraniol (rose, geranium).

  3. Watercress + beeftop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together94 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyraldehyde (malty, chocolate).

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

What each ingredient does

Pheasant
Is the main meat, cooked whole so its lean flesh roasts evenly.
Fat bacon
Bastes the lean breast with melting fat, keeping it moist and adding savoury flavour.
Gravy
Adds moisture and savoury depth to the roasted meat when served.

The step that matters

Roast the pheasant before a clear fire for 30 to 40 minutes. Lean game meat dries out quickly, so the bacon fat over the breast protects it while the heat cooks the bird through. Watching the time keeps the meat juicy rather than tough.

“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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