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A Salmi, or Hash of Wild Fowl

A hash of wild fowl cooked with port, lemon, cayenne, and fried bread pieces.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 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 ↓

A Salmi, or Hash of Wild Fowl

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Carve the wild fowl neatly and strip off the skin.

  2. Boil the skin and trimmings in good broth or gravy with shallots until the flavor is imparted.

Make the sauce

  1. Strain the mixture, heat it, and thicken slightly with brown roux or browned flour.

  2. Add ⅓ cup port wine, lemon juice, and cayenne to taste.

Serve

  1. Warm the carved birds slowly in the sauce without boiling.

  2. Before serving, add the juice of ½ lemon and place fried sippets around 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. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  2. Lemon + shallottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,523 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Shallot + flourtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,081 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Shallot + port winetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together380 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  5. Pepper + shallottop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,898 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

Wild fowl
Provides the main meat, which is carved and gently warmed in the sauce.
Broth or gravy
Carries the flavor of the skin and trimmings and forms the body of the sauce.
Brown roux or browned flour
Thickens the sauce and adds a toasted, nutty flavor.
Port wine
Adds depth and a touch of sweetness to the sauce.
Shallots
Add a mild, savory aroma to the broth as it boils.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich sauce.

The step that matters

Warming the birds without boiling. Boiling toughens the proteins in the meat, making it dry and stringy, and can break the thickened sauce. Gentle heat keeps the fowl tender.

“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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