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Pheasants and Partridges

A pheasant stuffed with diced veal and minced bacon, seasoned with pepper and sea salt, roasted and served with gravy and bread sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and walnut are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,039 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Pheasants and Partridges

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Preheat your oven to 400°F (200°C).

Stuff and roast

  1. Stuff the pheasant with the veal and bacon mixture, season with pepper, and tie it to secure the stuffing.

  2. Roast the pheasant until cooked through, ensuring the gravy from the veal infuses the meat.

Serve

  1. Serve with gravy and bread sauce in separate tureens.

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. Pepper + walnuttop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,039 recipes

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

  2. Butter + walnuttop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,832 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Pheasant + vealtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together132 recipes

    Shared aroma: geraniol (rose, geranium).

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

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

  5. Veal + walnuttop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together273 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Cock pheasant
Forms the main body of the dish and is the meat that gets cooked through.
Lean veal
Adds meat flavour and releases gravy as it cooks, moistening the pheasant.
Bacon
Adds fat and savoury flavour to the stuffing, keeping it moist as it roasts.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, helping the skin brown and the meat stay moist.

The step that matters

Roasting until cooked through. Pheasant is lean, so it can dry out before the stuffing and centre are fully cooked. Cooking to doneness, not just to a set time, keeps the meat tender and safe to eat.

Swap the walnut

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

  1. Chestnutfits better
  2. Beansfits about as well
  3. Walnutthe original
  4. Almondfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against pheasant, veal, pepper, butter. 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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