Why it works: Pheasant and butter work together. They rank in the top 20% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 511 recipes. Both carry decanal, which smells soap, orange peel. The science ↓
Roast Pheasant
Ingredients
Directions
Pluck the feathers from the pheasant carefully.
Cut a slit in the back of the neck to remove the crop.
Draw the bird in the usual way.
Wipe the inside clean with a damp cloth or pour water through it.
Wipe the outside with a dry cloth.
Cut off the toes and tuck the head under the wing.
Season with coarse sea salt and rub with butter before roasting.
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.
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Pheasant + buttertop 20% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together511 recipes
Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
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