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Boiled Pheasant

A pheasant boiled with optional oyster or chestnut stuffing, served with celery sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Boiled Pheasant

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Truss the pheasant for boiling and stuff it with either oyster stuffing or boiled and skinned chestnuts.

  2. For oyster stuffing, chop the suet finely and mix it with bread crumbs, lemon rind, parsley, salt, cayenne, nutmeg, oysters, their strained liquor, and eggs.

  3. Stuff the pheasant at the neck end and place it breast down in hot water.

Boil and serve

  1. Boil gently for 30 to 45 minutes, depending on size.

  2. Serve with celery sauce poured over and around.

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. Lemon + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Parsley + nutmegtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,062 recipes

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

  3. Lemon + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  4. Oyster + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,545 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Bind the stuffing so it holds together after boiling.
Suet
Adds fat to the stuffing, keeping it moist and rich during cooking.
Bread crumbs
Absorb moisture and give the stuffing body and structure.
Oysters
Add savoury, briny flavour and some texture to the stuffing.

The step that matters

Boil gently in hot water. A gentle simmer cooks the pheasant evenly without toughening the meat. Vigorous boiling can make the muscle fibres tough and dry, and the stuffing may break apart.

“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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