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A Salmi, or Hash Op Wild Foivl

A hash of wild birds simmered in a sauce of port, lemon, cayenne, and brown roux, served with fried sippets.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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 ↓

A Salmi, or Hash Op Wild Foivl

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Carve the birds neatly and remove the skin.

Make the sauce

  1. In a pot, boil the skin and trimmings of the wild birds in good broth or gravy with shallots until the flavor is imparted.

  2. Strain the mixture, heat it, and thicken slightly with brown roux or browned flour.

  3. Add ⅓ cup port wine, lemon juice, and cayenne to the sauce.

Finish and serve

  1. Warm the birds slowly in the sauce without boiling.

  2. Before serving, add the juice of ½ small lemon and serve hot with fried sippets around the dish.

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. Lemon + shallottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,523 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Shallot + flourtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,081 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Pepper + shallottop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,898 recipes

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

  5. Lemon + flourtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,404 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Wild birds
Provide the main meat, which is warmed gently in the sauce until tender.
Port or claret
Adds depth, sweetness and a fruity acidity that balances the rich sauce.
Broth or gravy
Forms the liquid base of the sauce and carries the flavor of the birds.
Brown roux or browned flour
Thickens the sauce and adds a toasted, nutty color and flavor.

The step that matters

Warm the birds slowly without boiling. Boiling toughens meat proteins and makes them dry and stringy, while gentle heat keeps the birds tender and moist in the sauce.

Swap the shallot

The recipe marks shallot as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pepper, lemon, flour):

  1. Arrowrootfits better
  2. Kalefits about as well
  3. Okrafits about as well
  4. Shallotthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, lemon, 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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