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To Roast Wild Fowl

A roasted wild fowl seasoned with salt, pepper, butter, onion, and lemon, served with gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

To Roast Wild Fowl

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

  1. Preheat oven to 400°F (200°C).

  2. Remove gills from the wild fowl and place the bird in a roasting pan.

  3. Season the fowl with coarse sea salt, black pepper, and a piece of butter inside each.

Roast and baste

  1. To reduce any fishy taste, add an onion and hot water to the dripping pan and baste the fowl for the first 10 minutes.

  2. After 10 minutes, remove the dripping pan and baste the fowl constantly with butter.

Finish and serve

  1. When ready, slice the breast before removing the bone and squeeze lemon juice over it for added flavor.

  2. Serve with a rich brown gravy and shallot sauce on the side.

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 + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. Pepper + oniontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  3. Butter + oniontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  5. Onion + lemontop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,646 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Adds fat and richness, and browns the skin while basting keeps the meat moist.
Lemon
Adds bright acidity that lifts the flavor of the finished meat.
Onion
Added to the dripping pan to help reduce any fishy taste in the drippings.

The step that matters

Basting the fowl. Regular basting with butter keeps the surface moist and helps the skin brown, while the meat cooks through. Letting the bird dry out makes it tough.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pepper, butter, lemon):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Spinachfits better
  3. Asparagusfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, butter, lemon. 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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