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Salmi of Pheasant

A pheasant stew made with game remains, vegetables, stock, and sherry, finished with bread crumbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,053 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Salmi of Pheasant

Ingredients

Directions

Make the stock

  1. Collect the bones and trimmings, and stew them with a bay leaf and bacon rind in leftover gravy or stock.

  2. Add onion, carrot, turnip, celery, parsley, and peppercorns.

  3. Stew until the gravy is strong and flavorful.

  4. Strain the gravy.

Prepare the stew

  1. Cut the remains of the game into neat pieces, removing all skin and fat.

  2. If needed, thicken it with corn flour mixed with cold water and browning.

  3. Heat the gravy, season with salt and pepper, and add the game pieces.

  4. Heat gently without boiling.

  5. Ten minutes before serving, add the sherry or Madeira.

Serve

  1. Arrange the game in the center of a dish, pour the sauce over, and garnish with fried bread crumbs.

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. Carrot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

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

  2. Carrot + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  3. Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Celery + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,810 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  5. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

What each ingredient does

Pheasant
Forms the main meat of the stew, becoming tender as it is gently heated in the gravy.
Bacon rind
Adds savory fat and salty depth to the stock as it stews.
Onion
Builds aromatic sweetness and body into the stock as it stews.
Sherry or madeira
Adds acidity and fortified wine aroma, rounding the gravy's flavor when added near the end.
Corn flour
Thickens the gravy so it coats the pieces of game.

The step that matters

Heat gently without boiling. Boiling toughens the proteins in the meat and can make the gravy cloudy or break its texture, so the game should only be held at a gentle heat.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pheasant, clove, carrot, turnip, celery, parsley, pepper):

  1. Parsnipfits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Shallotfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pheasant, clove, carrot, turnip, celery, parsley, pepper. 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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