Skip to main content
Main

Pheasants and Partridges

Roasted pheasants or partridges served with a gravy made from mutton scrag, lemon pickle, ketchup, browning, wine, spices, and lemon rind.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 16 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Ketchup and sugar match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 260 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Pheasants and Partridges

Ingredients

Directions

Roast the birds

  1. Spit and lay the pheasants or partridges down.

  2. Dust them with flour.

  3. Baste often with fresh butter, keeping them at a distance from the fire.

  4. Roast for about 30 minutes.

Make the gravy

  1. Place the scrag of mutton in a saucepan for the gravy.

  2. Add lemon pickle, ketchup, and browning to the saucepan.

  3. Melt sugar and butter in a frying pan over a clear fire until frothy to make browning.

  4. When the browning is deep brown, gradually add red wine while stirring continuously.

  5. Add Jamaica pepper, cloves, shallots, mace, salt, and lemon rind.

  6. Boil slowly for 10 minutes.

  7. Pour the gravy into a bowl and let cool.

  8. Remove the scum from the gravy.

  9. Strain the gravy.

  10. Bottle the gravy for use.

Serve

  1. Serve the birds with 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. Ketchup + sugartop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together260 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + ketchuptop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,435 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

    Shared aroma: acetaldehyde (pungent, ethereal).

  5. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

Pheasants or partridges
Provide the main meat, which is roasted until cooked through.
Fresh butter
Basting adds fat that carries heat to the surface and helps the skin brown and stay moist.
Red wine
Adds acidity and depth of flavour to the gravy as it reduces.
Scrag of mutton
Gives the gravy a rich, meaty body and savoury flavour.
Sugar
Caramelises with butter to form the dark browning that colours and flavours the gravy.
Shallots
Add mild sweetness and savoury aroma to the gravy.

The step that matters

Cooking the browning. Sugar and butter must be heated until deep brown but not burnt. Under-cooked browning gives pale, weak colour, while scorched sugar turns bitter and spoils the gravy.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pheasant, flour, butter, mutton, ketchup, sugar, red wine):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against pheasant, flour, butter, mutton, ketchup, sugar, red wine. 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

Mutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipesLemon SauceLemon Sauce236 recipesHaricot MuttonHaricot Mutton59 recipesMutton SoupMutton Soup56 recipes