Skip to main content
Main

Grouse Braised, and Cabbage

A braised grouse cooked with shallots, mace, bay leaves, thyme, parsley, and boiled cabbage.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Thyme and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,057 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Grouse Braised, and Cabbage

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Draw the legs of the grouse in, like chickens for boiling.

  2. Lay the bottom of a stewpan with fat bacon.

  3. Add the grouse, shallots, mace, bay leaves, thyme, and parsley.

Prepare the cabbage

  1. Blanch the cabbages, cut them into quarters, and boil until three-quarters done.

  2. Cool the cabbages in cold water, then squeeze them dry with a cloth.

  3. Tie the cabbages with twine and add them to the stewpan with the grouse.

Braise and finish

  1. Braise the grouse over very low heat for one hour.

  2. Strain the liquid and skim off the fat.

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. Thyme + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Shallot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,737 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  3. Shallot + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,476 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Parsley + cabbagetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together660 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  5. Shallot + cabbagetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-octenal (fatty, green).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Grouse
Provides the main meat, which becomes tender through slow braising.
White cabbages
Add bulk and a mild, sweet flavour as they soften in the braising liquid.
Fat bacon
Releases fat and savoury flavour into the stewpan as the base for braising.
Shallots
Soften during braising and add a mild, sweet onion-like flavour.
Thyme
Adds a herbal aroma that infuses the braising liquid.

The step that matters

Braise the grouse over very low heat for one hour. Low, gentle heat keeps the liquid from boiling hard, which would toughen the meat's proteins and make the grouse dry and stringy. Slow braising instead breaks down connective tissue into tender meat.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (shallot, thyme, parsley, cabbage):

  1. Marjoramfits better
  2. Tarragonfits better
  3. Capersfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against shallot, thyme, parsley, cabbage. 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.

You might also like

Red CabbageRed Cabbage65 recipesStewed CabbageStewed Cabbage58 recipesBaked CabbageBaked Cabbage51 recipesCabbage DressingCabbage Dressing19 recipes