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Devilled Game

A dish of sliced cooked game seasoned with cayenne, salt, paprika, lemon juice, coated in butter and breadcrumbs, then baked.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 ↓

Devilled Game

Oven, in the book's wordsA sharp oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a sharp oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

  1. Cut the cooked game into neat slices, removing skin and bone.

  2. Season the slices with cayenne, salt, paprika, and lemon juice.

  3. Dip the slices into melted butter.

  4. Coat the slices with brown bread crumbs.

Bake

  1. Arrange the slices on a well-buttered baking tin.

  2. Bake in a preheated oven at 400°F (200°C) for a few minutes until golden.

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. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Lemon + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  4. Pepper + breadtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,964 recipes

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

  5. Lemon + breadtop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,445 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Carries the crumbs and promotes browning and a rich flavour as it cooks.
Brown bread crumbs
Form a crisp, golden coating that browns in the oven and protects the meat.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the sharp, savoury flavour of the seasoning.

The step that matters

Baking until golden. The slices are already cooked, so the oven only needs to brown the crumb coating. Overbaking dries the meat and can burn the crumbs, so watch for golden colour and remove promptly.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Lemonthe original
  2. Figfits about as well
  3. Plumfits less well
  4. Mangofits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, butter, bread. 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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