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Salmi of Game

A pheasant stew made with stock, sherry, onion, herbs, and a roux, served with fried croutes.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and mace are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,400 recipes. Both carry methyleugenol, which smells clove, spice. The science ↓

Salmi of Game

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare and simmer

  1. Divide the pheasant into neat joints.

  2. Remove all the skin.

  3. Place the joints in a pan with hot stock, trimmings, sherry, onion, herbs, and seasonings.

  4. Simmer for 30 minutes.

  5. Strain the mixture.

Make the sauce

  1. Melt the butter in a pan.

  2. Add the flour and fry until brown.

  3. Stir in the stock.

  4. Add the joints of the bird.

Serve

  1. Serve garnished with fried croutes.

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. Clove + macetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  2. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Onion + clovetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,901 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

  4. Sherry + clovetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,237 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  5. Sherry + buttertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,505 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Pheasant
Provides the meat, which becomes tender through slow simmering in the stock.
Brown stock
Supplies the main liquid and savoury body of the sauce.
Butter
Adds richness and carries the flour as it cooks into a roux.
Flour
Thickens the sauce when fried in butter and then mixed with the stock.
Sherry
Adds acidity and aromatic depth to the cooking liquid.
Onion
Adds savoury sweetness and aroma to the simmering liquid.

The step that matters

Frying the flour until brown. The flour must cook in the melted butter long enough to lose its raw taste and form a roux. Frying it too briefly leaves the sauce tasting floury, while frying it too hot can scorch it and make the sauce bitter.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Cinnamonfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pheasant, sherry, onion, clove, butter, 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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