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Pheasants, with Rice, a l/ESPAGNOLE

A stew of pheasants simmered with rice, Spanish sausages, mirepoix, consommé, and saffron, finished with tomato sauce and Poivrade sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,053 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Pheasants, with Rice, a l/ESPAGNOLE

Ingredients

Directions

Braise the pheasants

  1. Place the trussed pheasants in an oval stewpan with carrot, celery, onions, parsley, and sausages.

  2. Moisten the stew with red wine mirepoix and cover the stew.

  3. Stew gently for about 2 hours.

Make the rice

  1. Wash the rice thoroughly, boil for 3 minutes, and drain on a sieve.

  2. Heat salad oil in a large sauté pan over high heat.

  3. Add the rice to the pan and fry until slightly browned, stirring constantly.

  4. Transfer the rice to a stewpan.

  5. Moisten the rice with consommé.

  6. Season the rice with Cayenne and saffron.

  7. Simmer gently for 30 minutes.

  8. Mix the rice with tomato sauce and add glaze to the mixture.

Shape and serve

  1. Mold the rice into quenelle shapes.

  2. Arrange the quenelles around the pheasants.

  3. Sauce the dish with Poivrade sauce mixed with part of the pheasant broth.

  4. Serve.

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. Carrot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

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

  2. Carrot + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  3. Celery + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,810 recipes

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

  4. Carrot + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,873 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  5. Carrot + oniontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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

What each ingredient does

Rice
Forms the bulk of the dish and, once moistened and simmered, absorbs the consommé to set into shapes.
Red spanish sausages
Flavour the braising liquid and the stew with smoky, savoury seasoning.
Salad oil
Carries heat into the rice so the grains brown lightly before liquid is added.
Consommé
Cooks the rice and gives it savoury moisture as it simmers.
Tomato sauce
Adds acidity and colour to the rice mixture.

The step that matters

Frying the rice until slightly browned. Rice fried in hot oil before liquid is added toasts the grains and helps them stay separate, so they hold their shape when moulded into quenelles.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pheasant, carrot, celery, clove, parsley, red wine, rice):

  1. Turnipfits better
  2. Parsnipfits better
  3. Leekfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pheasant, carrot, celery, clove, parsley, red wine, rice. 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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