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Braised Pheasant

A pheasant braised with bacon, veal, salt, pepper, and sweet herbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Pheasant and veal work together. They rank in the top 17% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 132 recipes. Both carry geraniol, which smells rose, geranium. The science ↓

Braised Pheasant

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Prepare and truss the pheasant as for boiling.

  2. Line a stewpan with slices of fat bacon and veal.

  3. Season the bird well with salt and pepper.

  4. Add a few sweet herbs and cover with more bacon and veal.

Braise

  1. Seal the stewpan air-tight and place it in a moderate oven.

  2. Cook until done.

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. Pheasant + vealtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together132 recipes

    Shared aroma: geraniol (rose, geranium).

  2. Veal + peppertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,049 recipes

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

  3. Pheasant + peppertop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together462 recipes

    Shared aroma: sabinene (woody, terpenic).

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

What each ingredient does

Pheasant
Provides the main meat, which becomes tender through slow, enclosed cooking.
Fat bacon
Adds fat and savoury flavour, basting the bird as it cooks.
Veal
Adds gelatinous body and meaty flavour to the braising liquid and meat.
Sweet herbs
Add aromatic flavour that perfumes the bird during the enclosed cooking.

The step that matters

Seal the stewpan air-tight. A tight seal traps steam so the bird cooks in its own moisture and gently braises. A leaky lid lets moisture escape, which can dry the meat and slow tenderising.

“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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