Skip to main content
Main

Devilled Game

A seasoned game bird prepared with a spicy mustard and anchovy sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Devilled Game

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the birds

  1. Split the woodcock, snipe, wild duck, or any game that is underdone.

  2. Mix salt, cayenne pepper, curry powder, and wet with French mustard. Cover the birds inside and out with this mixture.

Make the sauce

  1. Remove the brains when the head is split and, if using woodcock, add the trail.

  2. Make a paste with the brains, yolk of the hard-boiled egg, mace, and lemon peel.

  3. Season the paste with essence of anchovies, ketchup, or other sauce.

  4. Add wine, cayenne pepper, pounded sugar, and lemon or Seville orange juice.

Cook and serve

  1. Roll butter in flour and place the birds and sauce in a metal dish over a lamp.

  2. Cover tightly and shake occasionally until most of the sauce is absorbed.

  3. 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. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  2. Ketchup + sugartop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together260 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Pepper + mustardtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,430 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  4. Mustard + lemontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,816 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Lemon + winetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,157 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Woodcock, snipe, or wild duck
Forms the main meat that absorbs the seasoned sauce during cooking.
Egg yolk
Binds the brains, mace, and lemon peel into a smooth, thick paste.
Butter
Adds richness and moisture, helping the sauce coat the birds.
Wine
Adds liquid and acidity that carry the seasonings into the meat.
Lemon or seville orange juice
Adds acidity that brightens the sauce and balances the spices.

The step that matters

Cover tightly and shake occasionally until most of the sauce is absorbed. Keeping the dish tightly covered traps steam so the birds cook gently and stay moist. Shaking redistributes the sauce so it coats evenly, while reducing it until most is absorbed concentrates the flavour.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pepper, mustard, egg, lemon, ketchup, wine, sugar):

  1. Tarragonfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Parsleyfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, mustard, egg, lemon, ketchup, wine, sugar. 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.

You might also like

Lemon SauceLemon Sauce236 recipesTomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipes