Why it works: Ketchup and sauce match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,099 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓
Pheafants and Partridges
Ingredients
Directions
The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.
Prepare and roast
Preheat your oven to 400°F (200°C).
Prepare the birds by spitting them and dusting with flour.
Baste the birds often with fresh butter while roasting them at a distance from the fire for about 30 minutes.
Make the gravy
Make gravy by combining the mutton scrap with lemon pickle, ketchup, and browning in a saucepan.
Strain the gravy and add a little to the dish with the birds.
Serve
Serve the birds with the remaining gravy in one bowl and bread sauce in another.
For decoration, place a feather from the pheasant in its tail.
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.
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Ketchup + saucetop 1% of all pairsSmell alikestrongCooked together1,099 recipes
Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
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Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together27,232 recipes
Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).
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Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together124,287 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Mutton + breadtop 12% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together1,488 recipes
Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).
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Flour + ketchuptop 13% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together2,435 recipes
Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
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
- Flour
- Dusting the birds helps form a light coating that promotes browning on the skin.
- Fresh butter
- Basting adds fat and moisture to the birds while they roast, keeping the meat from drying out.
- Mutton scrap
- Forms the base of the gravy, adding meaty savour to the sauce.
- Ketchup
- Adds sweetness and acidity to the gravy, balancing its rich flavour.
The step that matters
Basting the birds often while roasting. Lean game birds dry out easily over heat. Frequent basting with butter adds fat and moisture to the surface, helping the skin stay tender and brown evenly.
Swap the lemon
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pheasant, flour, butter, mutton, ketchup, bread, sauce):
- Raisinfits about as well
- Lemonthe original
- Applefits about as well
- Red currantfits about as well
Fit is the average pairing score against pheasant, flour, butter, mutton, ketchup, bread, sauce. 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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