Skip to main content
Main

Pheafants and Partridges

Roasted pheasants and partridges served with mutton gravy and bread sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Ketchup and sauce match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,099 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Pheafants and Partridges

Ingredients

Directions

Roast the birds

  1. Spit and lay the birds.

  2. Dust the birds with flour.

  3. Baste them often with fresh butter.

  4. Roast the birds at a distance from the fire for about 30 minutes.

Make the gravy

  1. Make gravy using mutton.

  2. Add lemon pickle, ketchup, and browning sauce to the gravy.

  3. Strain the gravy.

Serve

  1. Serve a little gravy with the birds and the rest in a separate bowl.

  2. Serve bread sauce in another bowl.

  3. Garnish with a feather from the pheasant's tail.

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. Ketchup + saucetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,099 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + ketchuptop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,435 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Pheasant + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together225 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetaldehyde (pungent, ethereal).

  5. Butter + saucetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,338 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

Flour
Forms a light coating on the birds that helps them brown and holds in juices.
Butter
Adds fat that keeps the birds moist and promotes golden browning as they roast.
Mutton
Provides the meaty liquid base that gives the gravy its savoury flavour.
Browning sauce
Darkens the gravy and adds a deeper, roasted colour and flavour.
Lemon pickle
Adds sharp acidity that balances the richness of the gravy and meat.

The step that matters

Roast at a distance from the fire. Gentler, indirect heat lets the birds cook through evenly before the outside scorches. Basting with butter keeps the surface moist and golden during the roast.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pheasant, flour, butter, ketchup, sauce, mutton):

  1. Raisinfits about as well
  2. Lemonthe original
  3. Applefits about as well
  4. Red currantfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against pheasant, flour, butter, ketchup, sauce, mutton. 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.

More roasted pheasants and partridges recipes

with Gravy 3 See all 8 →

You might also like

Mutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipesLemon SauceLemon Sauce236 recipesHaricot MuttonHaricot Mutton59 recipesMutton SoupMutton Soup56 recipes