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Salmis of Pheasant

A pheasant dish simmered in a white wine and orange sauce, served with toasted bread.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and orange match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,634 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Salmis of Pheasant

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the sauce

  1. Remove the skin from the pheasant pieces and trim them nicely.

  2. Combine the bones and trimmings with shallots, garlic, bay leaf, lemon zest, white wine, and gravy in a saucepan.

  3. Simmer gently until the sauce reduces.

  4. Strain the sauce through a fine sieve.

Finish and serve

  1. Return the sauce to the pan, add the pheasant pieces, and heat without boiling.

  2. Arrange the meat on a hot dish, squeeze orange juice into the sauce, and pour it around the meat.

  3. Garnish with sippets of toast or fried bread and serve hot.

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 + orangetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

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

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

  3. Shallot + garlictop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,000 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  5. Shallot + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,677 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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 is gently warmed in the sauce rather than cooked hard.
White wine
Adds acidity and depth as it reduces into the sauce.
Shallots
Add a mild, sweet onion flavour that builds the base of the sauce.
Gravy
Adds savoury body and richness to the reduced sauce.
Orange juice
Adds bright acidity and fresh citrus flavour to the finished sauce.

The step that matters

Heat the pheasant without boiling. Boiling a sauce with meat in it can toughen the protein and make the meat dry and stringy. Gentle heat keeps the pieces tender while they warm through.

Swap the orange

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pheasant, shallot, clove, garlic, lemon, white wine, pepper):

  1. Limefits better
  2. Orangethe original
  3. Plumfits about as well
  4. Avocadofits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against pheasant, shallot, clove, garlic, lemon, white wine, pepper. 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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