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To Stew Pheasants

A pheasant stew with veal broth, artichokes, mace, wine, lemon, and force‑meat balls.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Artichoke and flour match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 466 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

To Stew Pheasants

Ingredients

Directions

Stew the pheasant

  1. In a stew-pan, add the pheasant and enough veal broth to cover it.

  2. Let it stew until there is just enough liquid left for sauce.

Make the sauce

  1. Skim off any scum, then add parboiled artichoke bottoms, beaten mace, wine, pepper, and salt.

  2. If the sauce is not thick enough, mix butter and flour, then add to the sauce.

  3. Squeeze in lemon juice.

Serve

  1. Remove the pheasant, pour the sauce over it, and add force-meat balls to the dish.

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. Artichoke + flourtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together466 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Artichoke + peppertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,170 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  3. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Wine + buttertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,645 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

  5. Pheasant + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together225 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetaldehyde (pungent, ethereal).

Butter and flour 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

Pheasant
Is the main meat, which becomes tender as it stews slowly in the broth.
Veal broth
Provides the liquid that cooks the pheasant and, reduced, forms the base of the sauce.
Artichoke bottoms
Add a tender, mild vegetable body to the stew and sauce.
Butter and flour
Together form a roux that thickens the sauce and adds richness.
Wine
Adds acidity and depth of flavour to the sauce.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich sauce.

The step that matters

Let the stew reduce to just enough liquid for sauce. Cooking the pheasant in a covered simmer until the broth is reduced concentrates flavour and gives the sauce body. Stopping too early leaves it thin and watery, and reducing too far leaves the meat dry and the sauce too salty.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pheasant, veal, artichoke, wine, pepper, butter, flour):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against pheasant, veal, artichoke, wine, pepper, butter, flour. 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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