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Pheasant

Roasted pheasant served with bread sauce and brown gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Pheasant and bread work together. They rank in the top 17% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 239 recipes. Both carry decanal, which smells soap, orange peel. The science ↓

Pheasant

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Pluck, draw, and truss the pheasant.

  2. Lard the bird or pass it through hot fat.

Roast and serve

  1. Cook over the fire, basting well.

  2. Cook for about 45 minutes for a good-sized bird, less for a small one.

  3. Serve with bread sauce and brown gravy.

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. Pheasant + breadtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together239 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  2. Pheasant + saucetop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together290 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanoic acid (soapy, waxy).

  3. Bread + saucetop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,934 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Pheasant
Forms the main body of the dish, cooking to tender meat when roasted whole.
Hot fat
Coats the bird to add moisture and richness during roasting.

The step that matters

Basting well while cooking over the fire. Lean game meat dries out easily over direct heat. Regular basting with fat keeps the surface moist and helps it brown evenly.

“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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