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To Boil a Pheasant

A pheasant stuffed with oysters, wrapped in bacon and beef steaks, boiled for four hours.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Pheasant and beef work together. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 131 recipes. Both carry decanal, which smells soap, orange peel. The science ↓

To Boil a Pheasant

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Draw and stuff the pheasant with oysters.

  2. Lard the pheasant with bacon or wrap it in thin slices of bacon.

  3. Wrap the bacon-enveloped pheasant in beef steaks and cover with a paste made of flour and water.

Boil and serve

  1. Boil in a basin for four hours.

  2. Cut through the crust, remove the pheasant, and serve.

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. Pheasant + beeftop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together131 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  2. Pheasant + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together225 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetaldehyde (pungent, ethereal).

  3. Oyster + beeftop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together798 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, green).

  4. Pheasant + oystertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together56 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Oyster + flourtop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,582 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (grass, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Hen pheasant
Forms the main meat that is cooked slowly inside the wrapping.
Oysters
Stuffing that adds a briny, savoury flavour to the bird.
Bacon
Fat that bastes the lean pheasant meat and keeps it moist during the long boil.
Beef steaks
Extra wrapping layer that adds meaty flavour to the surrounding cooking liquid.
Flour
Forms the paste crust that holds the wrapping together during boiling.

The step that matters

Boil in a basin for four hours. Long, steady boiling is needed to cook the dense pheasant through, while the flour-and-water crust must stay sealed so the bird does not dry out or waterlog.

“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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