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Pheasant Forcemeat Cake with Grenadines

A forcemeat cake made from pheasant fillets, bacon, bread crumbs, eggs, and reduced Spanish sauce, poached in a bain‑marie.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Pheasant Forcemeat Cake with Grenadines

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fillets

  1. Trim the fillets from the pheasant and wrap them with strips of bacon.

  2. Place them in a buttered sauté pan, sprinkle with salt and pepper, and cover with buttered paper.

Make the forcemeat

  1. Prepare a panada with bread crumbs and essence of pheasant, then let it cool on a plate.

  2. Remove the remaining flesh from the pheasant bones and pound it in a mortar with the minion fillets and fillets of six fowls.

  3. Pass the mixture through a fine sieve, then return it to the mortar.

  4. Mix in an equal amount of pounded boiled udder and half the quantity of pheasant meat and panada.

  5. Season with more salt, pepper, and grated nutmeg, then pound to combine.

  6. Add the eggs one at a time and enough reduced Spanish sauce to achieve a stiff consistency.

Poach and serve

  1. Fill a buttered oval mold (10 inches long and 2.5 inches wide) with the forcemeat and poach it in a bain‑marie without boiling.

  2. Once set, turn the forcemeat onto a croustade on a dish, glaze it, and arrange the cooked and glazed pheasant fillets on top.

  3. Garnish with silver skewers, cocks' combs, and truffles, and serve with a sauceboat of reduced Spanish sauce mixed with essence of pheasant.

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

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

  2. Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

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

  3. Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  4. Bread + nutmegtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,997 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Butter + saucetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,338 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

Butter and sauce barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 15,338 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

Eggs
Bind the forcemeat so it holds its shape when set.
Crumb of bread
Forms a panada that keeps the forcemeat moist and tender.
Thin strips of fat bacon
Adds fat that keeps the lean pheasant fillets moist during cooking.
Reduced spanish sauce
Adds moisture and body so the mixture reaches a stiff consistency.
Pheasant fillets
Provide the main lean meat and flavour of the forcemeat.

The step that matters

Poach in a bain-marie without boiling. Gentle heat lets the egg proteins set into a smooth, tender custard-like structure. Boiling water would make the forcemeat rubbery, pitted, or cracked.

Swap the nutmeg

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pheasant, pepper, butter, bread, egg, sauce):

  1. Parsleyfits about as well
  2. Capersfits about as well
  3. Nutmegthe original
  4. Tarragonfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against pheasant, pepper, butter, bread, egg, sauce. 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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