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Salmis of Pheasant

A sauce made from pheasant trimmings, mushrooms, truffle, butter, white wine, and stock, served over roasted pheasant.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Mushroom and truffle are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,900 recipes. Both carry 2,4-nonadienal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Salmis of Pheasant

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the pheasant

  1. Roast the pheasant until cooked through.

  2. Cut the pheasant into pieces at the joints.

  3. Remove all the skin from the pieces.

  4. Arrange the pieces on a dish and keep them hot.

  5. Chop the trimmings from the pheasant with the mushrooms and truffle.

Make the sauce

  1. In a stewpan, melt the butter over medium heat.

  2. Add the chopped trimmings and mushrooms to the butter.

  3. When the butter turns pale golden, add the white wine and stock.

  4. Simmer the mixture for 15 minutes.

  5. Carefully skim any fat from the surface.

Serve

  1. Pour the hot sauce over the pheasant and serve.

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. Mushroom + truffletop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,900 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

  2. Mushroom + white winetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,765 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity).

  3. Mushroom + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

  4. Butter + white winetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,083 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  5. Truffle + buttertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,209 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

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

What each ingredient does

Mushrooms
Release moisture and savoury flavour into the butter as they cook down into the sauce.
Butter
Carries flavour and adds richness, and browns slightly to add nutty aroma.
Chablis (white wine)
Adds acidity and aromatic depth, and reduces during simmering to concentrate the sauce.
Stock
Provides the liquid base and body for the sauce.

The step that matters

Skimming the fat from the surface. Fat from the pheasant and butter floats on top of the simmering sauce; removing it carefully keeps the sauce clean-tasting and less greasy.

“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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