Skip to main content
Main

Emince of Pheasant, with Broiled Legs

A dish of minced cooked pheasant served with broiled pheasant legs, flavored with shallots, ham, herbs, stock, cream, and seasonings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 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 ↓

Emince of Pheasant, with Broiled Legs

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Mince the breast of the cooked pheasant.

  2. Divide and score the legs.

Make the sauce

  1. Put the trimmings in a stew pan with shallots, ham, thyme, parsley, and stock.

  2. Boil for 30 minutes, then strain and skim the fat.

  3. Melt butter in a stew pan, add flour, and stir for 1-2 minutes.

  4. Add the strained liquid and cream, then bring to a boil.

  5. Squeeze in lemon juice and season with pepper, salt, and sugar.

Broil and serve

  1. Season the legs with pepper and salt, then broil them.

  2. Serve the minced pheasant on a dish with the broiled legs around the sides.

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. Shallot + flourtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,081 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Cooked pheasant breast
Provides the main minced meat that forms the body of the dish.
Pheasant legs
Are divided, scored, and broiled to give a browned, crisp finish.
Flour
Cooked with butter to form a roux that thickens the sauce.
Butter
Enriches the sauce and, with flour, forms the thickening base.
Cream
Adds richness and a smoother, rounder texture to the sauce.
Shallots
Add a mild aromatic sweetness to the stock used for the sauce.

The step that matters

Stirring the butter and flour roux. Cooking flour in melted butter for a short time removes its raw taste and lets it thicken the liquid evenly. Adding the stock too early or skipping the stir can leave lumps or a pasty flavour.

Swap the parsley

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pheasant, shallot, ham, thyme, butter, flour, cream):

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Tarragonfits about as well
  3. Parsleythe original
  4. Nutmegfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against pheasant, shallot, ham, thyme, butter, flour, cream. 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

Lemon SauceLemon Sauce236 recipesPheasant SoupPheasant Soup25 recipesTomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipes