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Devilled Game

A dish of game birds prepared with a spicy deviled sauce made from brains, egg yolk, mace, and wine.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 16 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Devilled Game

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the birds

  1. Split the woodcock, snipe, wild duck, or any underdone game.

  2. Mix salt, cayenne pepper, curry powder, and wet with French mustard.

  3. Cover the birds inside and out with the mixture.

Make the sauce

  1. Remove the brains when splitting the head and add the trail if using woodcock.

  2. Make a paste with the brains, egg yolk, mace, lemon peel, and sauce.

  3. Add wine, cayenne pepper, sugar, and lemon or orange juice to the paste.

Cook and serve

  1. Roll butter in flour and place the birds and sauce in a metal dish over a lamp.

  2. Cover tightly and shake occasionally until most of the sauce is absorbed.

  3. Serve hot.

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. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. Ketchup + sugartop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together260 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Pepper + mustardtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,430 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  4. Mustard + lemontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,816 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Lemon + winetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,157 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Brains
Bind the paste and add a rich, savoury body to the sauce.
Egg yolk
Emulsifies and thickens the paste so it clings to the birds.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, carrying flavour through the gentle cooking.
Wine
Adds acidity and liquid that loosens the sauce as it cooks.
Sugar
Balances the heat of the cayenne and lemon with gentle sweetness.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the sauce and cuts the richness.

The step that matters

Shake occasionally until most of the sauce is absorbed. Covered gentle heat with shaking keeps the birds moist while the sauce reduces and coats them. Too much heat or too little covering can scorch the sauce or dry the meat.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pepper, mustard, egg, lemon, ketchup, wine, sugar):

  1. Tarragonfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Parsleyfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, mustard, egg, lemon, ketchup, wine, 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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