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Plovers, Roasted

Roasted plovers served on toast with bacon, butter, watercress, and brown sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and watercress match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 579 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Plovers, Roasted

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the birds

  1. Pluck and truss the plovers, but do not draw them.

  2. Brush the birds with warm butter.

  3. Tie a slice of bacon over each breast.

Roast

  1. Roast in front of a clean fire for 15 to 20 minutes, depending on your taste.

  2. Hang the birds on the spit feet downwards.

  3. Place the toast in the dripping pan to catch the drippings.

  4. Baste the birds well with butter.

  5. Shortly before serving, remove the bacon.

  6. Dredge the plovers lightly with flour.

  7. Baste again to achieve a light brown appearance.

Make the sauce and serve

  1. Prepare the brown sauce.

  2. Add the port wine and juice of 1 lemon to the sauce.

  3. Serve the plovers on the toast.

  4. Garnish with watercress and lemon quarters.

  5. Serve the sauce in a sauceboat.

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. Lemon + watercresstop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together579 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Butter + port winetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,499 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  3. Butter + saucetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,338 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

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

  5. Sauce + watercresstop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together295 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

Butter and sauce barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 15,338 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

Plovers
The main meat, cooked whole so the flesh stays moist over the fire.
Bacon
Wrapped over the breasts, it bastes the lean meat with its fat as it cooks.
Butter
Basting fat that promotes browning and adds richness to the birds.
Port wine or claret
Adds acidity and depth to the sauce, balancing its richness.
Brown sauce
Rich savoury accompaniment that complements the roasted birds.

The step that matters

Baste again to achieve a light brown appearance. Lean game birds dry out and brown unevenly if fat is not reapplied during roasting. Regular basting keeps the surface moist and helps it colour gently.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, sauce, port wine, watercress):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, sauce, port wine, watercress. 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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