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Salmis of Pheasant

A sauce made from pheasant stock, flour, butter, sherry, and lemon, served over pheasant joints.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 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 ↓

Salmis of Pheasant

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the stock

  1. Cut the cold roast pheasant into joints and remove the skin.

  2. Place the skin, bones, and any leftover pieces in a stewpan.

  3. Add ½ cup of stock and bring to a boil for 30 minutes, then strain.

Make the sauce

  1. Melt 2 tablespoons of flour and 2 tablespoons of butter in a stewpan until brown.

  2. Add ⅓ cup of sherry and prepared gravy to taste.

  3. Season with salt, pepper, and the juice of 1 lemon.

Finish and serve

  1. When hot, add the joints of pheasant but do not let them boil.

  2. Serve with the sauce poured over the pheasant and garnish with fried sippets.

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. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Butter + sherrytop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,505 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  4. Pheasant + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together225 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetaldehyde (pungent, ethereal).

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

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

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Cold roast pheasant
Provides the main meat, which is gently reheated in the sauce rather than cooked again.
Flour
Thickens the butter to a roux, giving the sauce body and a nutty, browned flavour.
Butter
Carries the flour for the roux and adds richness and flavour to the sauce.
Sherry
Adds acidity and aromatic depth to the sauce.
Lemon juice
Adds brightness and acidity that balances the rich, savoury sauce.

The step that matters

Adding the pheasant without boiling. Once the joints are in, boiling toughens the meat's proteins and dries it out, so the sauce should only be kept hot and the pheasant gently warmed through.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Lemonthe original
  2. Plumfits about as well
  3. Figfits less well
  4. Raisinfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against pheasant, flour, butter, sherry, pepper. 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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