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Pheasants and Partridges

Roasted pheasants and partridges seasoned with pepper and salt, served with gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Vinegar and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,814 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Pheasants and Partridges

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the birds

  1. Clean the birds and wash them with vinegar and water.

  2. Draw, crop, and pick the birds if necessary.

  3. Wash the birds in two or three waters and rub them with coarse sea salt.

Blanch and drain

  1. Boil water in a large saucepan and plunge the birds in one by one, moving them up and down by the legs for thorough cleaning.

  2. Let them stay in boiling water for five to six minutes, then hang them in a cold place to drain.

Roast and serve

  1. Season the insides of the birds with pepper and salt before roasting.

  2. Roast the birds like turkey and serve with gravy.

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. Vinegar + peppertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,814 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: sabinene (woody, terpenic).

  3. Pheasant + vinegartop 30% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together39 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetaldehyde (pungent, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Pheasants
The main meat, which roasting cooks through while browning the skin.
Partridges
The second main meat, cooked the same way as the pheasants for a similar roasted texture.

The step that matters

Boiling for five to six minutes. The birds are only blanched briefly to clean and loosen the skin. Boiling longer would partly cook the flesh before roasting, leaving it drier and tougher.

“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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