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Curried Pheasant or Partridges

A stew of pheasant or partridges cooked with onions, butter, curry, stock, apples, cabbage, capsicum, lemon, and cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and cabbage match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,001 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Curried Pheasant or Partridges

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the sauce

  1. Half fry the birds in butter until browned, along with the sliced onions.

  2. In a bowl, mix butter, flour, and curry powder until smooth.

  3. Add the mixture to a stew-pan with stock and stir until smooth.

Simmer and serve

  1. Chop the apples and cabbage, then add them to the sauce with the minced capsicum, lemon juice and salt.

  2. Add the fried game to the sauce and simmer until tender, stirring frequently.

  3. Remove the meat with a spoon and arrange it on a dish.

  4. Boil the sauce to reduce it if necessary, then pour it hot over the game.

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. Onion + cabbagetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,001 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  2. Onion + capsicumtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together23,390 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  3. Cabbage + capsicumtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together685 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  4. Capsicum + lemontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,737 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Apple + capsicumtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together865 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

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

What each ingredient does

Pheasant or partridges
Provides the main meat, which browns in butter and turns tender during simmering.
Butter
Fat that carries flavour and helps the birds brown when half fried.
Flour
Thickens the stock into a smooth, body-rich curry sauce.
Curry powder
Supplies the spiced aroma and flavour that define the sauce.
Apples
Add sweetness and a mellow acidity that balances the curry spices.
Onions
Sweeten as they fry and form a flavour base for the sauce.

The step that matters

Simmering the game until tender. Gentle simmering, stirred often, lets the connective tissue in the joints break down slowly. Boiling hard toughens the meat and can break the sauce unevenly.

Swap the apple

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pheasant, onion, butter, flour, cabbage, capsicum, lemon):

  1. Limefits better
  2. Avocadofits better
  3. Coconutfits better
  4. Applethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pheasant, onion, butter, flour, cabbage, capsicum, lemon. 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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