Name: Peafowl, Larded and Roasted
Ingredients: 1 young peafowl; buttered paper; slices of bacon; forcemeat (optional); watercress (for garnish); clear brown gravy; bread sauce (for serving)

Why it works: Watercress and bread work together. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 307 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Peafowl, Larded and Roasted

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

Preheat oven to 350°F (175°C).
Truss the peafowl firmly, leaving the head attached to the skin of the breast.
Cover the head with buttered paper and fasten it under the wing.
Lard the breast and legs with slices of bacon, if desired.

Roast and serve

Roast the peafowl for 1 to 1.5 hours, depending on its size.
Remove the buttered paper from the head, trim the feathers, and glaze the larding.
Serve the bird on a hot dish with clear brown gravy underneath.
Garnish with watercress and serve bread sauce 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.

Watercress + breadtop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together307 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Watercress + saucetop 18% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together295 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
Bread + saucetop 22% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together4,934 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Bacon: Melts and bastes the lean breast meat, adding fat, moisture and savoury flavour as it cooks.
Peafowl: Provides the main meat; trussing keeps the bird compact so it cooks evenly.

“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.