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Roast Pheasants

A pheasant roasted with bacon, steak, and served with watercress, fried crumbs, brown gravy, and bread sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Roast Pheasants

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Hang the pheasant until blood drops from the beak, then pluck and draw it.

  2. Truss the pheasant like a fowl, leaving the head on.

  3. Insert the piece of rump steak inside the bird to keep it moist.

  4. Leave the feet on but cut off the toes.

  5. Tie the slice of fat bacon on the breast.

Roast and serve

  1. Roast the pheasant in front of a clear fire for 30 minutes if young or 40 minutes if old.

  2. Baste with butter during roasting.

  3. Just before finishing, remove the bacon, dredge lightly with flour, and baste with butter to create a froth.

  4. Serve with watercress, fried crumbs, brown gravy, and bread sauce.

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. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Flour + watercresstop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together340 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Pheasant + watercresstop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together23 recipes

    Shared aroma: geraniol (rose, geranium).

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

    Shared aroma: acetaldehyde (pungent, ethereal).

Butter and flour 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

Pheasant
Forms the main meat of the dish, cooked whole by roasting.
Rump steak
Placed inside the bird, it is meant to help keep the meat moist during roasting.
Fat bacon
Tied over the breast, its fat melts and bastes the lean breast meat as it cooks.
Butter
Basting fat that promotes browning and adds richness to the skin.
Flour
Dredged on before the final basting, it helps build a crisp, frothy surface.

The step that matters

Remove the bacon, dredge with flour, and baste with butter just before finishing. Timing matters: the flour and butter need a short, hot finish to form a light froth and browned surface. Leaving them on too long can burn the butter and make the coating bitter.

“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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