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Old Grouse Stew

A stew of grouse with butter, bacon, garlic, onion, cloves, water or stock, port, lemon, pepper, salt, thickened with flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Garlic and onion match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 29,058 recipes. Both carry furaneol, which smells caramel, strawberry. The science ↓

Old Grouse Stew

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the grouse

  1. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).

  2. Place the butter inside each grouse and skewer the neck skin over it.

  3. Lard the breasts with bacon slices.

Simmer

  1. In a stewpan, add the grouse, garlic, onion studded with cloves, and enough water or stock to cover.

  2. Add port, pepper, salt, and lemon. Simmer slowly for 2.5 to 3 hours.

Make the gravy and serve

  1. Remove the grouse and bacon, strain the gravy, and thicken with butter and flour.

  2. Boil the gravy and pour it over the grouse, which should be toasting in the oven.

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. Garlic + oniontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together29,058 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  2. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  4. Garlic + peppertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,090 recipes

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

  5. Garlic + lemontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,893 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Grouse
Provides the main meat, which becomes tender through long, slow simmering.
Butter
Adds richness and moisture, and with flour helps thicken the gravy.
Bacon
Adds fat and savoury flavour that bastes the lean breast meat.
Flour
Thickens the strained gravy so it coats the meat.
Port
Adds sweetness and depth to the gravy.

The step that matters

Simmering the grouse slowly. Grouse is lean and can turn tough if boiled hard. A gentle, slow simmer lets the connective tissue soften while the meat stays moist, so keep the liquid at a low simmer for the full 2.5 to 3 hours.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, clove, garlic, onion, pepper, flour):

  1. Avocadofits better
  2. Limefits about as well
  3. Lemonthe original
  4. Mangofits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, clove, garlic, onion, pepper, flour. 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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