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Teal, Roasted

Roasted teal served with watercress, lemon, and orange savoury sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Orange and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,634 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Teal, Roasted

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare and roast

  1. Pluck, draw, and truss the teal for roasting.

  2. Brush the teal with hot butter.

  3. Roast the teal before a clear fire for 25 to 30 minutes, basting frequently.

Serve

  1. Serve on a hot dish, garnished with watercress and lemon quarters.

  2. 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. Orange + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

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

  2. Watercress + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together579 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Orange + watercresstop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

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

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

Teal
The main meat, cooked whole and served as the centrepiece of the dish.
Butter
Basting fat that moistens the bird's surface and promotes gentle browning as it roasts.

The step that matters

Roast the teal before a clear fire, basting frequently. Basting with butter keeps the surface moist and helps it brown evenly, while the bird cooks through. Frequent basting helps prevent the lean meat from drying out during the 25 to 30 minute roast.

Swap the orange

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

  1. Limefits better
  2. Avocadofits better
  3. Orangethe original
  4. Coconutfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, sauce, watercress, 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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