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Admirable Mock Pheasant

A stuffed fowl filled with yolk, anchovy, pepper, and breadcrumbs, roasted and served with gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Admirable Mock Pheasant

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fowl

  1. Remove the gills from the fowl and truss it with the head turned like that of a pheasant.

  2. In a mortar, beat the yolks, anchovy, long pepper, and salt together.

  3. Mix the beaten mixture with fine bread crumbs and whites of eggs.

  4. Stuff the fowl with the mixture and tie it closely at the neck and rump.

  5. Lard the fowl all over the breast and legs with small pieces of bacon.

Roast and serve

  1. Cover the breast with paper and roast until just done.

  2. Dredge with flour and baste with fresh butter to achieve a fine white froth.

  3. Serve in a dish with good gravy and garnish with watercress.

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. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  2. Flour + watercresstop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together340 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Pepper + watercresstop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together983 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Anchovy + breadtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,260 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanol (green, fruity).

  5. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter 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

Eggs (yolks and whites)
Bind the stuffing and help it set into a firm, cohesive mass when cooked.
Fine bread crumbs
Absorb moisture and give the stuffing body so it holds together rather than running.
Bacon
Melts during roasting, basting the bird with fat and adding savory flavor to the meat.
Fresh butter
Adds fat for basting, promoting browning and a light, foamy appearance on the surface.
Anchovy
Adds a deep savory note that rounds out the richness of the egg stuffing.

The step that matters

Dredge and baste with butter. Flour and butter must be applied so the surface browns evenly; too little fat or heat leaves the skin pale and dry, while the froth depends on the butter being spooned over the bird as it roasts.

“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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