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Boiled Pheasant, with Celery Sauce

A boiled pheasant served with a sauce made from boiled celery, milk, and thick cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Pheasant and cream work together. They rank in the top 16% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 112 recipes. Both carry 2-nonanone, which smells fruity, floral. The science ↓

Boiled Pheasant, with Celery Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the pheasant

  1. Place the trussed pheasant in a stewpan, breast side up, and cover with 3 pints of new milk.

  2. Bring to a boil quickly, then reduce heat and simmer gently until done: 30 minutes for a small bird, 50 minutes for a large one, and 1 hour for an old one.

Make the celery sauce

  1. Wash and slice the celery, then boil in ¾ pint of milk until soft.

  2. Rub the cooked celery through a fine sieve and return to the saucepan.

  3. Boil the celery mixture quickly for 10 minutes, then stir in ½ cup of thick cream.

Serve

  1. Serve some sauce over the pheasant and the rest in a tureen.

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 + creamtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together112 recipes

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

  2. Pheasant + celerytop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together124 recipes

    Shared aroma: sabinene (woody, terpenic).

  3. Milk + creamtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together29,399 recipes

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

  4. Celery + creamtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,863 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-decalactone (peach, creamy).

  5. Milk + celerytop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,491 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-decalactone (peach, creamy).

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

What each ingredient does

Pheasant
Provides the main meat, which becomes tender through long, gentle simmering in milk.
New milk
Gently cooks the bird and gives a mild, creamy base to the poaching liquid.
White celery
Softens and breaks down into a smooth, flavourful purée that forms the sauce.
Milk
Cooks the celery until soft so it can be puréed into a smooth sauce.
Thick cream
Adds richness and body to the sauce, giving it a silky texture.

The step that matters

Simmer the pheasant gently. A rapid boil toughens meat proteins and can break the bird apart. Gentle simmering lets the connective tissue soften slowly, so the meat stays tender and moist.

Swap the celery

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pheasant, milk, cream):

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Celerythe original
  3. Garlicfits less well
  4. Cinnamonfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against pheasant, milk, cream. 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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