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Salmis of Pheasant, a LA Bourguignotte

A pheasant dish served with a reduced Espagnole sauce, Claret, consommé, and accompaniments such as mushrooms, truffles, onions, and quenelles.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Shallot and thyme match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,476 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Salmis of Pheasant, a LA Bourguignotte

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the pheasant

  1. Let the roasted pheasant cool.

  2. Cut the cooled pheasant into pieces: remove the legs, cut off the fillets with the pinion bones, separate the breast from the back, trim, and cut both crosswise into halves.

Make the sauce

  1. Chop the trimmings and place them in a stewpan with the sliced shallots, bay leaf, thyme, peppercorns, mace, and butter.

  2. Fry until slightly browned.

  3. Moisten with ½ cup of Claret or Burgundy and boil until reduced by half.

  4. Add ½ cup of white consommé and simmer for 15 minutes.

  5. Strain through a sieve into a stewpan with enough Espagnole sauce.

  6. Clarify and reduce the sauce, then strain it into a basin.

Finish and serve

  1. Pour one-third of the sauce over the pheasant pieces and keep the rest warm with button mushrooms, truffles, glazed onions, and quenelles.

  2. Warm the pheasant pieces without boiling.

  3. Plate the pheasant pieces.

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. Shallot + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,476 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  2. Shallot + mushroomtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,982 recipes

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

  3. Mushroom + truffletop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,900 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

  4. Thyme + mushroomtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

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

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

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 is cut into pieces and gently warmed in the sauce.
Espagnole sauce
Forms the rich, thick base of the sauce that coats the pheasant.
Claret or burgundy
Adds acidity and depth of flavour as it reduces into the sauce.
Butter
Adds fat and helps brown the trimmings and aromatics at the start of the sauce.
Shallots
Add a mild sweetness and aromatic depth to the sauce base.
Button mushrooms
Add earthy flavour and a tender texture alongside the pheasant.

The step that matters

Warm the pheasant pieces without boiling. Boiling toughens the proteins in the meat and can make it dry and stringy, so gentle heat keeps it tender and juicy in the sauce.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pheasant, shallot, thyme, butter, sauce, mushroom, truffle):

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Tarragonfits better
  3. Parsleyfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pheasant, shallot, thyme, butter, sauce, mushroom, truffle. 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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