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Pheasant, Curried

A pheasant cooked in a curry sauce thickened with rice flour and served over rice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Thyme and marjoram match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,225 recipes. Both carry terpineol, which smells pine, woody. The science ↓

Pheasant, Curried

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Joint the pheasant and trim the pieces.

  2. Boil the odds and ends with the stock.

Make the curry

  1. Brown the joints with the onion and herbs, then add them to the stock, reserving the rice flour.

  2. Once cooked, strain the mixture, placing the meat on a dish.

  3. Return the liquid to the pot, skim well, and add the rice flour.

  4. Boil briefly.

  5. Season with salt and pour over the pheasant.

Serve

  1. Serve with a border of rice.

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. Thyme + marjoramtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,225 recipes

    Shared aroma: terpineol (pine, woody).

  2. Marjoram + basiltop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together688 recipes

    Shared aroma: terpineol (pine, woody).

  3. Thyme + basiltop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,768 recipes

    Shared aroma: terpineol (pine, woody).

  4. Marjoram + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together687 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  5. Thyme + carrottop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

What each ingredient does

Rice flour
Thickens the cooking liquid into a sauce as it boils.
Stock
Forms the liquid base of the sauce and carries the flavour.
Onion
Browns and sweetens, adding savoury depth to the sauce.
Pheasant
Provides the main meat, which is browned before simmering.

The step that matters

Adding the rice flour. Rice flour thickens only when the liquid boils, and lumps form if it is stirred in unevenly. Adding it to the skimmed liquid and boiling briefly lets the starch swell smoothly into an even sauce.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pheasant, rice, flour, thyme, marjoram, basil, carrot):

  1. Parsnipfits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Turnipfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pheasant, rice, flour, thyme, marjoram, basil, carrot. 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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