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Pbeafants and Partridges

Roasted pheasants or partridges served with a gravy made from mutton gravy, lemon pickle, game catchup, and browning sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Pbeafants and Partridges

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare and roast

  1. Split the pheasants or partridges and lay them flat.

  2. Dust the birds with flour.

  3. Baste them often with fresh butter, keeping them away from the fire.

  4. Roast for about 30 minutes.

Make the gravy

  1. Make gravy by combining mutton gravy, lemon pickle, game catchup, and browning sauce in a saucepan.

  2. Strain the gravy and serve a little with the birds.

Serve

  1. Serve the remaining gravy in a bowl and bread sauce in another.

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. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: acetaldehyde (pungent, ethereal).

  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. Butter + muttontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,781 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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
Coats the skin so it browns and crisps during roasting.
Fresh butter
Adds fat that keeps the surface moist and promotes even browning while basting.
Mutton gravy
Provides the savoury liquid base that gives the sauce body and moisture.
Lemon pickle
Adds sharp acidity that cuts through the richness of the gravy and game.
Browning sauce
Darkens the gravy to a rich brown colour.

The step that matters

Basting and keeping the birds away from the fire. Intense direct heat can scorch the outside before the meat cooks through. Keeping the birds back and basting them often with butter moistens the surface and encourages even browning.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pheasant, flour, butter, mutton, sauce):

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Coconutfits about as well
  3. Lemonthe original
  4. Applefits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against pheasant, flour, butter, mutton, 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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