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Teal with Olives

Roasted teal stuffed with parsley and aromatics, topped with bacon, served with brown sauce and olives.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and thyme match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,057 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Teal with Olives

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Draw and wash the teal, then dry them with a cloth.

  2. Stuff the cavity of each teal with parsley and aromatics.

  3. Cover the breast with bacon or oiled paper.

  4. Pierce the teal through the side with an iron skewer and fix on the spit.

Roast and serve

  1. Roast the teal over a brisk fire for 14-15 minutes.

  2. Once done, unwrap and cut each teal into four pieces.

  3. Serve the pieces with the fillets on top, drizzled with brown sauce mixed with olives.

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. Parsley + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Thyme + olivetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,948 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl 2-methylbutyrate (apple, fatty).

  3. Parsley + olivetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,649 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  4. Sauce + olivetop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together5,568 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Parsley + saucetop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,693 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Teal
Provides the lean, delicate meat that is the main element of the dish.
Bacon or oiled paper
Covers the breast to protect it from drying out over the fire.
Brown sauce
Adds savoury depth and moisture to the meat when drizzled over it.
Stoned and blanched olives
Add salty, briny flavour to the brown sauce that accompanies the meat.

The step that matters

Roast the teal over a brisk fire. Teal are small and lean, so they can dry out quickly. A brisk fire for a short time cooks them through while keeping the meat moist, and the 14-15 minute window is short enough that overcooking is easy.

Swap the thyme

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (parsley, sauce, olive):

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Thymethe original
  3. Tarragonfits about as well
  4. Garlicfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against parsley, sauce, olive. 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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