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Curried Pheasant or Partridges

A stew of pheasant or partridges cooked with onions, butter, curry powder, stock, apples, cabbage, capsicum, lemon, and cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and cabbage match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,001 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Curried Pheasant or Partridges

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the game and onions

  1. Half fry the bird joints in butter until browned, along with the sliced onions.

Make the sauce

  1. In a separate bowl, mix butter, flour, and curry powder until smooth.

  2. Add the mixture to a stew-pan with stock and stir until smooth.

  3. Combine chopped apples, cabbage, minced capsicum, lemon juice, and salt in the sauce.

  4. Add the fried game to the sauce.

  5. Stir in the cream.

  6. Simmer until everything is tender, stirring frequently.

  7. Boil the sauce to reduce it if necessary.

Serve

  1. Remove the meat and arrange it on a dish.

  2. Pour the hot sauce over the game.

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. Onion + cabbagetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,001 recipes

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

  2. Onion + capsicumtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together23,390 recipes

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

  3. Cabbage + capsicumtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together685 recipes

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

  4. Capsicum + lemontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,737 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Apple + capsicumtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together865 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

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

What each ingredient does

Pheasants or partridges
Provides the main meat, which becomes tender through slow simmering in the sauce.
Butter
Browns the game and onions, adding richness and savoury flavour to the base.
Flour
Thickens the stock into a smooth sauce that coats the meat.
Curry powder
Supplies the spiced aroma and flavour that define the dish.
Apples
Add natural sweetness that balances the spice and the sharpness of the capsicum and lemon.
Cream
Softens the sauce and adds richness and a mellow body.

The step that matters

Stirring the flour and butter mixture smooth before adding stock. Flour clumps if it is not fully blended with fat first, and lumps are hard to remove once it meets the hot liquid. Blending it smooth lets the starch thicken the sauce evenly.

Swap the apple

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pheasant, onion, butter, flour, cabbage, capsicum, lemon):

  1. Limefits better
  2. Avocadofits better
  3. Coconutfits better
  4. Applethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pheasant, onion, butter, flour, cabbage, capsicum, 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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