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Potted Pheasant, Partridge, Goose, or Snipe

A dish of birds stuffed with a forcemeat of veal, bacon, spices, truffles, and baked, then sealed with suet and lard.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Veal and truffle work together. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 815 recipes. Both carry 2,4-nonadienal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Potted Pheasant, Partridge, Goose, or Snipe

Oven, in the book's wordsA slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a slow oven”. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the forcemeat

  1. Bone the birds carefully.

  2. Prepare a forcemeat by chopping and pounding the veal and bacon until fine. Rub the mixture through a wire sieve to remove sinews.

  3. Beat in spices, Cayenne, and salt to taste in a mortar.

  4. Wash, peel, and warm the truffles in butter. Mix the warmed truffles with the forcemeat.

Assemble and bake

  1. Layer forcemeat at the bottom of pots.

  2. Line the sides of the pots with bacon slices.

  3. Stuff the birds with the mixture.

  4. Cover the birds with more forcemeat.

  5. Bake in a slow oven at 300°F (150°C) for 1 hour and 15 minutes.

Seal and finish

  1. Once cooled, pour melted suet and lard over the top.

  2. Seal with bladders.

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. Veal + truffletop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together815 recipes

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

  2. Truffle + buttertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,209 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

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

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

  4. Pepper + buttertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

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

  5. Veal + buttertop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,381 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Veal
Forms the lean, finely textured body of the forcemeat.
Bacon
Adds fat and moisture so the forcemeat stays rich and tender as it cooks.
Fresh green truffles
Contribute a earthy, aromatic flavour that perfumes the forcemeat.
Suet and lard
Form a fat seal over the top that excludes air and helps preserve the pots.

The step that matters

Sieving the forcemeat. Rubbing the chopped veal and bacon through a wire sieve removes sinews that would otherwise stay tough and stringy. A smooth, evenly ground mixture gives the set potted texture the dish depends on.

“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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