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Salmi of Pheasant

A pheasant stew made with game remains, vegetables, and a brown sherry or Madeira sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,053 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Salmi of Pheasant

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the stock

  1. Cut the remains of the game into neat pieces, removing all skin and fat.

  2. Collect bones and trimmings, and stew them with a bay leaf and bacon rind in leftover gravy or stock.

  3. Add onion, carrot, turnip, celery, parsley, and peppercorns; stew until the gravy is strong and flavorful.

  4. Strain the gravy and boil again if necessary, thickening with corn flour mixed with cold water.

Finish and serve

  1. Season the gravy with salt and pepper, add the game pieces, and heat gently without boiling.

  2. Ten minutes before serving, add the sherry or Madeira.

  3. Arrange the game in the center of a dish, pour the sauce over, and garnish with fried bread crumbs.

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. Carrot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  2. Carrot + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  3. Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Celery + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,810 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  5. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

What each ingredient does

Remains of game
Provides the main meat, which is cooked gently in the sauce to become tender.
Bacon rind
Adds savory, smoky fat and depth to the stock as it simmers.
Corn flour
Starch that thickens the strained gravy into a smooth, glossy sauce.
Brown sherry or madeira
Adds sweetness and a rich, nutty aroma to the finished sauce.

The step that matters

Heat the game gently without boiling. Once the game is added, boiling toughens the meat proteins and can make the thickened sauce break or turn grainy. Keeping it at a gentle heat keeps the meat tender and the sauce smooth.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (clove, carrot, turnip, celery, parsley, pepper, sherry):

  1. Parsnipfits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Lettucefits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against clove, carrot, turnip, celery, parsley, pepper, sherry. 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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