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A Salmi, or Hash of Wild Fowl

A savory hash of wild fowl simmered in a port wine and lemon sauce with cayenne pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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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 ↓

A Salmi, or Hash of Wild Fowl

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the sauce

  1. Carve the birds neatly and remove the skin.

  2. Boil the skin and trimmings in good broth or gravy with shallots until flavored.

  3. Strain the mixture, heat, and thicken slightly with brown roux or browned flour.

Finish and serve

  1. Add port wine, lemon juice, and cayenne to the sauce.

  2. Warm the birds slowly in the sauce without boiling.

  3. Serve hot with fried snippets around the dish.

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. Lemon + shallottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,523 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Shallot + flourtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,081 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Shallot + port winetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together380 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  5. Pepper + shallottop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,898 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

What each ingredient does

Wild fowl
Provides the main meat, which is gently warmed so it stays tender.
Brown roux or browned flour
Thickens the sauce slightly and adds a toasted, nutty color and flavor.
Port wine
Adds sweetness and depth of flavor to the sauce.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich sauce and balances the sweetness of the port.

The step that matters

Warm the birds slowly without boiling. Boiling toughens meat proteins and can make the meat dry and stringy, so the birds should be heated gently in the sauce just until warm.

“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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