Skip to main content
Main

Pheasants and Partridges

Roasted pheasants or partridges served with a gravy made from mutton, spices, and wine.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 16 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 the birds down.

  2. Dust them with flour and baste often with fresh butter, keeping them at a distance from the fire.

  3. Roast for about 30 minutes.

Make the gravy

  1. For the gravy, place the scrag of mutton in a saucepan.

  2. Add lemon pickle, ketchup, and browning sauce.

  3. In a frying pan, mix sugar and butter over a clear fire until frothy.

  4. When deep brown, gradually add red wine while stirring continuously.

  5. Add Jamaica pepper, cloves, shallots, mace, ketchup, salt, and lemon rind.

  6. Boil slowly for 10 minutes.

  7. Pour the gravy into a bowl.

  8. Once cold, remove the scum and bottle for use.

Serve

  1. Serve the birds with gravy and 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. Ketchup + sugartop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together260 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Sauce + sugartop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,147 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

Butter
Basting fat that browns the birds' skin and keeps the meat moist as it roasts.
Sugar
Caramelised with butter to give the gravy its deep brown colour and sweetness.
Red wine
Adds acidity and depth of flavour to the gravy as it reduces.
Shallots
Soften during simmering and add a mild savoury sweetness to the gravy.
Flour
Dusted over the birds to help form a browned, lightly crisp surface.

The step that matters

Caramelising the sugar and butter. Sugar burns quickly once it turns dark, giving a bitter taste. Cooking over a clear, moderate fire and stopping at deep brown keeps the colour rich without scorching, and gradually adding the wine prevents the hot caramel from spattering or seizing.

Swap the lemon

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

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

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

More roasted pheasants and partridges recipes

with Gravy 3 See all 8 →

You might also like

Mutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipesLemon SauceLemon Sauce236 recipesHaricot MuttonHaricot Mutton59 recipesMutton SoupMutton Soup56 recipes