Name: Salmi of Woodcocks
Ingredients: 2 woodcocks, half roasted; ½ pint cullis (or rich meat sauce); 2 shallots, chopped; ¼ cup Port wine; a bit of lemon peel; pepper, to taste; coarse sea salt, to taste; lemon juice, to taste; fried bread, for serving

Why it works: Lemon and pepper 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 ↓

Salmi of Woodcocks

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

Cut the half-roasted woodcocks into neat pieces.
Pound the trimmings and entrails in a mortar.

Make the sauce

In a stewpan, combine the pounded mixture, cullis, chopped shallots, Port wine, and lemon peel.
Season with pepper, coarse sea salt, and lemon juice.
Boil the mixture for 10 minutes.
Strain the liquid over the carved woodcocks.

Stew and serve

Stew gently until cooked.
Place the pan in boiling water over the fire to cook evenly.
Serve in a deep dish with fried bread slices sprinkled on top.

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.

Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together27,047 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
Shallot + lemontop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together2,523 recipes

Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).
Shallot + port winetop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together380 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).
Shallot + peppertop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together5,898 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).
Shallot + breadtop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,245 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

Woodcocks: Provide the main meat, which becomes tender as it stews in the sauce.
Cullis: Forms the rich meat base that gives the stew its body and savoury depth.
Shallots: Add a mild, sweet savoury aromatic flavour as they soften in the sauce.
Port wine: Adds sweetness and depth of flavour, and helps build a richer sauce.

The step that matters

Stew gently until cooked. Gentle heat keeps the meat tender and prevents the sauce from reducing too fast or turning tough. A hard boil toughens meat proteins and can break the sauce.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (meat, shallot, port wine, pepper, bread):

Figfits about as well
Red currantfits about as well
Lemonthe original
Cherryfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, shallot, port wine, pepper, bread. 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.

Brown Bread461 recipes

Lemon Sauce236 recipes

White Bread80 recipes

Bread Omelette60 recipes

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Salmi of Woodcocks