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Scollops of Pheasants. Escalopes De Faisans.

Thin fillets of pheasant sautéed in butter and finished with espagnole sauce and optional truffles.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and truffle are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,209 recipes. Both carry nonanal, which smells fat, citrus. The science ↓

Scollops of Pheasants. Escalopes De Faisans.

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fillets

  1. Cut the pheasant wings into equal-sized fillets.

  2. Melt butter in a sauté pan.

  3. Arrange the fillets in the pan.

  4. Season the fillets with salt and pepper.

  5. Baste the fillets with the melted butter.

Make the sauce

  1. Make a fumet from the remaining pheasant parts.

  2. Add the fumet and espagnole sauce to the pan, reducing to a half glaze.

  3. Toss the fillets in the sauce.

  4. Drain off excess butter.

  5. Return the fillets to the sauce.

  6. Finish with a pat of butter.

  7. Add truffles if desired.

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. Butter + truffletop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,209 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  2. Pheasant + truffletop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together133 recipes

    Shared aroma: octanal (fat, soap).

  3. Butter + saucetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,338 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Pheasant + saucetop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together290 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanoic acid (soapy, waxy).

  5. Pheasant + peppertop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together462 recipes

    Shared aroma: sabinene (woody, terpenic).

Butter and sauce barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 15,338 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Pheasant
Provides the lean meat that forms the fillets and the bones for the fumet.
Butter
Adds richness and helps brown and baste the fillets, then gives the sauce a glossy finish.
Espagnole sauce
Adds body and concentrated savoury flavour, reducing to a glaze that coats the fillets.

The step that matters

Reducing to a half glaze. Reducing the fumet and espagnole sauce concentrates both flavour and salt, and goes sticky if taken too far. Stopping too early leaves the sauce thin and unable to coat the fillets.

“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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