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Roast Pheasant with Mushrooms

A pheasant roasted with a mushroom stuffing and served with a savory gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and mustard match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,259 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Roast Pheasant with Mushrooms

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the pheasant

  1. Pluck, singe, draw, and lard the pheasant.

  2. Roughly chop the mushrooms and mix with 2 ounces of butter; season with salt and cayenne.

  3. Stuff the pheasant with the mushroom mixture, truss it, and cover with thickly buttered paper.

Roast and brown

  1. Roast the pheasant for about 40 minutes.

  2. Remove the paper and brown the pheasant.

Make the gravy and serve

  1. For the gravy, heat the remaining butter and fry the minced onion until brown.

  2. Add flour and brown it, then add the chopped liver of the pheasant, salt, sugar, mustard, and stock.

  3. Boil, then simmer for 30 minutes, strain, and add the drippings from the pheasant.

  4. Serve the gravy in a tureen.

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. Onion + mustardtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,259 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  2. Mushroom + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

  3. Mustard + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,430 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  4. Mushroom + oniontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,626 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  5. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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

What each ingredient does

Pheasant
Is the main protein, roasted whole and stuffed, with its liver used in the gravy.
Mushrooms
Add moisture and earthy flavour as a stuffing that cooks inside the bird.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, and browns the paper-covered bird and the gravy roux.
Flour
Thickens the gravy as it browns with the butter and onion.
Made mustard
Adds sharp, pungent flavour that balances the richness of the gravy.

The step that matters

Browning the flour for the gravy. Flour cooked in butter must brown gently until nutty and fully cooked; if it is undercooked the gravy tastes raw and pasty, and if it burns it turns bitter. Adding the stock afterward then thickens the gravy smoothly.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pheasant, mushroom, mustard, flour, butter, pepper, sugar):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Chivefits better
  3. Spinachfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pheasant, mushroom, mustard, flour, butter, pepper, sugar. 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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