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Pheasants, a LA Dauphinoise

Pheasants braised in wine and stock, finished with a lemon‑pepper sauce, topped with breadcrumbs and Parmesan.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Pheasants, a LA Dauphinoise

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Braise the pheasants

  1. Prepare the pheasants as for boiling and braise them in a wine mirepoix.

  2. Once cooked, remove the strings and let them cool partially.

Coat and assemble

  1. Cover the pheasants with reduced Allemande sauce mixed with half the mirepoix.

  2. Allow the sauce to cool, then coat the pheasants with a mixture of bread crumbs and grated Parmesan cheese.

  3. Place the pheasants in a buttered deep sauté pan or pie dish, adding the remaining mirepoix to moisten the bottom.

Bake and serve

  1. Before serving, sprinkle with clarified butter and bake in a 300°F (150°C) oven, basting frequently until lightly browned.

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. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  2. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  3. White wine + parmesan cheesetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together697 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

  4. White wine + buttertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,083 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  5. Butter + parmesan cheesetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,163 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Pheasants
Provide the main meat, which is braised until tender before being coated and baked.
Bread crumbs
Form a crisp, golden crust over the sauced birds as they bake.
Grated parmesan cheese
Adds savoury flavour and helps the crumb coating brown.
Clarified butter
Promotes even browning and crispness on the crust during baking.
White wine
Flavours the braising mirepoix, adding acidity and aroma to the meat.

The step that matters

Cooling before coating. The sauce must cool enough to cling to the birds rather than run off, and the crumb coating needs a set surface to stick and brown evenly.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pheasant, white wine, pepper, butter, parmesan cheese, bread):

  1. Lemonthe original
  2. Plumfits about as well
  3. Grapefits less well
  4. Applefits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against pheasant, white wine, pepper, butter, parmesan cheese, bread. 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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