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Pheasant with Truffles

A pheasant roasted after being stuffed with truffles, parsley, thyme, and bacon, served with a brown truffle sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and thyme match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,057 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Pheasant with Truffles

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Prepare the pheasant for boiling and barding the breast with bacon.

  2. Stuff the inside with 4 to 5 truffles and some chopped parsley and thyme.

Roast and serve

  1. Roast the pheasant until well done and golden brown.

  2. Serve garnished with a brown sauce containing truffles and mushrooms.

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. Parsley + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Truffle + mushroomtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,900 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

  3. Thyme + mushroomtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  4. Parsley + mushroomtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,132 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  5. Pheasant + thymetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together97 recipes

    Shared aroma: geraniol (rose, geranium).

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

What each ingredient does

Pheasant
Forms the main meat, which is lean and needs careful cooking to stay tender.
Bacon
Barding fat wraps the lean breast, adding moisture and savoury flavour as it renders during roasting.
Truffles
Provide a strong, earthy aroma that defines the dish.
Brown sauce
Adds richness and moisture, and carries the truffle and mushroom flavour to the plate.

The step that matters

Barding the breast with bacon. Pheasant breast is very lean and dries out easily under heat. A layer of bacon fat protects the meat and bastes it as it roasts, helping keep it moist.

Swap the parsley

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pheasant, truffle, thyme, sauce, mushroom):

  1. Marjoramfits better
  2. Garlicfits about as well
  3. Parsleythe original
  4. Tarragonfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against pheasant, truffle, thyme, sauce, mushroom. 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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