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A Salmi, or Hash of Wild Fowl

A hash of wild fowl with a sauce of port wine, lemon juice, cayenne, and browned flour, served with fried bread sippets.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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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 ↓

A Salmi, or Hash of Wild Fowl

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Carve the birds neatly and remove the skin.

  2. Boil the skin and trimmings of the wild fowl with 2 lightly fried shallots until flavored.

  3. Strain the mixture and thicken it slightly with brown roux or browned flour.

Finish and serve

  1. Add ½ cup of port wine, lemon juice, and cayenne to taste.

  2. Warm the birds slowly in the sauce without boiling.

  3. Serve hot with fried bread 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. Lemon + peppertop 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. Port wine + shallottop 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 warmed through in the sauce.
Shallots
Add savory aromatic flavor to the stock made from the skin and trimmings.
Brown roux or browned flour
Thickens the strained liquid and adds a toasted, nutty color and flavor.
Port wine
Adds sweetness and depth to the sauce.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich sauce.

The step that matters

Warm the birds slowly in the sauce without boiling. Boiling toughens and dries cooked meat, and can make a thickened sauce separate or turn grainy. Gentle heat keeps the birds tender and the sauce smooth.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Figfits about as well
  2. Lemonthe original
  3. Cherryfits about as well
  4. Red currantfits about as well

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

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