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Pheasants and Partridges

Roasted pheasants or partridges served with a gravy made from mutton, lemon pickle, ketchup, and browning, accompanied by bread sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Ketchup and sauce match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,099 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Pheasants and Partridges

Ingredients

Directions

Roast the birds

  1. Spit and lay down the birds.

  2. Dust them with flour.

  3. Baste often with fresh butter, keeping them at a distance from the fire.

  4. Roast for about 30 minutes.

Make the gravy

  1. Make gravy by cooking the mutton in a saucepan.

  2. Add lemon pickle, ketchup, and browning to the gravy.

  3. Strain the gravy and serve a little with the birds.

Serve

  1. Serve the remainder in a separate dish with bread sauce.

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. Ketchup + saucetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,099 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Mutton + breadtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,488 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  5. Flour + ketchuptop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,435 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Pheasants or partridges
Provide the main meat, which cooks through over the fire while being basted.
Flour
Dusted on the birds to help form a light coating that browns during roasting.
Fresh butter
Basting fat that moistens the birds and promotes even browning on the skin.
Mutton
Cooked in a saucepan to give the gravy its meaty body and flavour.
Lemon pickle
Adds sharp acidity and tang to the gravy.
Browning
Adds deep brown colour to the gravy.

The step that matters

Keeping the birds at a distance from the fire. Too close a fire scorches the flour and butter coating before the birds cook through. Basting often at a gentler distance lets the heat penetrate slowly and keeps the skin moist and evenly browned.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pheasant, flour, butter, mutton, ketchup, bread, sauce):

  1. Raisinfits about as well
  2. Lemonthe original
  3. Applefits about as well
  4. Red currantfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against pheasant, flour, butter, mutton, ketchup, bread, sauce. 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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