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Salmi of Woodcocks

A broth of woodcock parts simmered with wine, shallot, parsley, cayenne, black pepper, and broth, finished with sauce tournée and lemon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Salmi of Woodcocks

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut off the legs, wings, and breasts of cold woodcocks.

  2. Combine the remaining bird parts, white wine, shallot, parsley, cayenne pepper, black pepper, and broth in a pot.

  3. Simmer until the flavor is extracted.

  4. Strain the mixture through a fine sieve.

  5. Skim off the grease.

Finish the sauce and serve

  1. Add sauce tournée and bring to a boil.

  2. Squeeze in lemon juice.

  3. Pour the sauce over the woodcocks, allowing them to soak without boiling.

  4. Serve the salmi hot.

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 + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Shallot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,737 recipes

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

  3. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  4. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  5. Shallot + lemontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,523 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

What each ingredient does

Woodcocks
Provide the main meat, which becomes tender and flavorful as it soaks in the sauce.
White wine
Adds acidity and aromatic depth to the braising liquid.
Sauce tournée
Thickens the sauce and gives it body and a richer flavor.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens and balances the rich sauce.

The step that matters

Pour the sauce over the woodcocks without boiling. Boiling toughens meat proteins and can make the birds dry and stringy. Keeping the sauce hot but below a boil lets the meat soak up flavor gently and stay tender.

“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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