Why it works: Butter and watercress work together. They rank in the top 24% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 842 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓
Woodcock, Roasted
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare
Carefully pluck the woodcocks, leaving the skin intact.
Truss the birds like other roasts, skin the head, and pass the beak through the legs and body.
Brush the birds with warm butter and place a slice of bacon over each breast.
Roast and serve
Hang the birds on a spit, feet downwards, and place toast underneath to catch drippings.
Baste frequently with hot butter and roast for about 15 minutes, or 10 minutes for rare.
Serve on the toast, garnish with watercress, and serve gravy in a sauce-boat.
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.
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Butter + watercresstop 24% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together842 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
- Woodcocks
- The main meat; its flesh is cooked through roasting while the skin stays intact.
- Bacon
- Covers the breast, adding fat that bastes the lean meat and flavours it as it renders.
- Butter
- Basting fat that carries heat over the birds, promoting even browning and moist meat.
- Toast
- Sits under the birds to catch drippings, soaking up fat and juices as a base for serving.
The step that matters
Baste frequently with hot butter. Woodcock is very lean and small, so it dries out quickly. Frequent basting with hot fat keeps the surface moist and promotes even browning.
“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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