Name: Roasted Pheasants with Gravy and Bread Sauce
Ingredients: 2 pheasants; salt; pepper; 2 cups gravy; 2 cups bread sauce

Why it works: Pepper and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 16% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 20,964 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Roasted Pheasants with Gravy and Bread Sauce

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. The book gives no cooking times either; the times in the steps were added in transcription, so check for doneness rather than trusting the clock.

Prepare

Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).
Season the pheasants with salt and pepper.

Roast and serve

Roast the pheasants in the oven for about 1 hour, or until cooked through.
Serve with hot gravy and bread sauce.

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.

Pepper + breadtop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together20,964 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Pheasant + breadtop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together239 recipes

Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).
Pheasant + saucetop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together290 recipes

Shared aroma: decanoic acid (soapy, waxy).
Pheasant + peppertop 20% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together462 recipes

Shared aroma: sabinene (woody, terpenic).
Bread + saucetop 22% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together4,934 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Pheasants: Provide the main meat, which cooks through in the oven to become tender and safe to eat.
Gravy: Adds moisture and savoury flavour to the sliced meat when served hot.
Bread sauce: Adds a creamy, mildly sweet accompaniment that softens the richness of the roasted meat.

The step that matters

Roast until cooked through. Pheasant is lean, so it can dry out quickly; cooking until the thickest part is fully cooked, without overcooking, keeps the meat juicy and safe to eat.

“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.

Brown Bread461 recipes

White Bread80 recipes

Bread Omelette60 recipes

Oatmeal Bread51 recipes

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Roasted Pheasants with Gravy and Bread Sauce