Skip to main content
Main

Salmi of Game

A stew of game pieces simmered with stock, onion, lemon peel, pepper, and salt, finished with a butter‑flour gravy, ketchup, lemon juice, and port.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Clove and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,150 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Salmi of Game

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the gravy

  1. Set aside the best parts of the game.

  2. Put the smaller pieces and trimmings into a stewpan with the stock, onion, lemon peel, pepper, and salt.

  3. Simmer for 30 minutes, then strain the gravy.

  4. Thicken the gravy with butter and flour.

Finish and serve

  1. Add the ketchup, lemon juice, and port.

  2. Return the pieces of game to the pan and let them warm through.

  3. If the gravy is not brown enough, add a little browning.

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. Clove + lemontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,150 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Onion + clovetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,901 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

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

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Onion + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

Game
Provides the main meat and flavour of the stew.
Butter and flour
Thicken the strained gravy into a smooth, body-rich sauce.
Port
Adds sweetness and depth of flavour to the gravy.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich, savoury gravy.

The step that matters

Thicken the gravy with butter and flour. Flour must be cooked into the butter and the gravy kept simmering so it thickens smoothly without lumps or a raw starchy taste.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (onion, clove, butter, flour, ketchup):

  1. Avocadofits better
  2. Raisinfits about as well
  3. Lemonthe original
  4. Limefits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, clove, butter, flour, ketchup. 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.

You might also like

Lemon SauceLemon Sauce236 recipesTomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipes