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Plovers Pried with English Truffles

A roasted plover dish flavored with butter, truffles, cloves, bay leaf, salt, and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,451 recipes. Both carry ethyl octanoate, which smells fruity, wine. The science ↓

Plovers Pried with English Truffles

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Pluck and truss the plovers as for roasting.

  2. Place the plovers breast down in a stewpan.

Cook

  1. Add the butter and truffles, which should be washed, wiped, pared thin, and sliced, along with the cloves, bay leaf, salt, and pepper.

  2. Cook gently until the plovers are done to your liking.

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. Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  2. Butter + truffletop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,209 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  3. Butter + peppertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

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

  4. Truffle + clovetop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together514 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-pinene (pine, resin).

  5. Butter + clovetop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,045 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

What each ingredient does

Plovers
Provide the main meat, which cooks gently in the butter until tender.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, and carries the flavour of the truffles into the birds.
Truffles
Add a strong earthy aroma that perfumes the butter and the birds.

The step that matters

Cook gently until the plovers are done to your liking. Gentle heat cooks small birds evenly while keeping the meat moist. High heat tightens the muscle proteins, toughening the flesh and drying it out.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, truffle, pepper):

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Sagefits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, truffle, 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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