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Admirable Mock Pheasant

A stuffed fowl filled with a yolk mixture, bacon, and breadcrumbs, roasted and served with gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Admirable Mock Pheasant

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the stuffing

  1. In a mortar, beat together the minced yolks, anchovy, long pepper, and salt. Mix in fine bread crumbs and whites of eggs.

  2. Stuff the mixture into a fowl, tying it closely at the neck and rump.

  3. Truss the fowl with the head turned like that of a pheasant.

  4. Lard the fowl with small pieces of bacon, covering the breast and legs.

Roast and serve

  1. Paper over the breast and roast until just done.

  2. Dredge with flour and baste with fresh butter until a white froth forms.

  3. Serve in a dish with good gravy and garnish with watercress.

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. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Flour + watercresstop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together340 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Pepper + watercresstop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together983 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Anchovy + breadtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,260 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanol (green, fruity).

  5. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Hard yolks of eggs
Bind the stuffing and add richness and a firm, savoury body.
Fine bread crumbs
Absorb moisture and give the stuffing a soft, crumbly texture.
Whites of eggs
Help bind the stuffing and set it as it cooks.
Bacon
Melts slowly over the bird, adding fat and moisture to the meat.
Fresh butter
Browns the surface and adds fat and flavour during basting.

The step that matters

Roast until just done. A whole stuffed bird can dry out before the stuffing is fully heated, or be underdone at the centre. Checking the temperature at the thickest part of the meat and the stuffing helps you stop at the right point, since residual heat keeps cooking the bird after it leaves the oven.

“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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