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Salmi of Pheasant

A pheasant stew made with remains, ham, vegetables, spices, consommé, sugar, and Seville orange juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Shallot and mushroom are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,982 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Salmi of Pheasant

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the stock

  1. Remove the skin from the pheasant remains and break up the bones and trimmings.

  2. In a stewpan, combine the bones, ham, shallot, mushrooms, carrot, mace, cloves, and peppercorns.

  3. Cover with ½ pint of consommé and simmer for 1.5 hours.

  4. Strain the gravy and return it to the stewpan.

Finish and serve

  1. Add the meat, sugar, and Seville orange juice.

  2. Heat slowly at the side of the fire to absorb the sauce.

  3. Serve neatly with fried snippets around.

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. Shallot + mushroomtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,982 recipes

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

  2. Carrot + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,873 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  3. Shallot + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,677 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Mace + clovetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  5. Shallot + carrottop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together803 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Pheasant remains
Provide the meat and bones that flavour the gravy as they simmer.
Consommé
Serves as the liquid that extracts flavour and forms the gravy base.
Seville orange juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich, savoury sauce.
Sugar
Balances the sharpness of the orange juice and rounds out the sauce.

The step that matters

Heating the stew slowly. Heating gently at the side of the fire lets the sauce reduce and thicken without boiling the meat, which would toughen it and make the gravy cloudy.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pheasant, ham, shallot, mushroom, carrot, clove, sugar):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against pheasant, ham, shallot, mushroom, carrot, clove, 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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