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Pheasants’ Fillets

Pheasant fillets coated in egg and breadcrumbs, fried in lard, served with gravy or mushroom sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Pheasants’ Fillets

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Remove the gills from the pheasant fillets.

  2. Melt some butter in a stewpan.

  3. Dip the fillets in the melted butter, then flatten and trim them.

Coat and fry

  1. Beat the egg with salt, dip the fillets in the egg, then coat with bread crumbs.

  2. Fry the fillets in boiling lard until light brown.

Serve

  1. Serve with gravy or mushroom sauce.

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. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Butter + mushroomtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

  3. Bread + mushroomtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,536 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  4. Egg + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  5. Pheasant + mushroomtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together145 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Pheasant fillets
Provide the lean meat that is cooked and served as the main dish.
Butter
Adds richness and flavour to the fillets before they are coated.
Egg
Acts as a binder so the bread crumbs stick to the fillets.
Fine bread crumbs
Form a crisp, golden coating that browns when fried.

The step that matters

Frying in boiling lard. The lard must be hot enough to brown the crumb coating quickly. If it is too cool, the coating absorbs fat and turns greasy before the lean pheasant cooks through.

“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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