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A Salmi of Moor Fowl, Pheasants, or Partridges

A stew of roasted game birds simmered in veal gravy with shallots, bay leaf, mace, peppercorns, cayenne, and lemon juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

A Salmi of Moor Fowl, Pheasants, or Partridges

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the game

  1. Carve the game neatly.

  2. Remove all skin and fat from the legs, wings, and breasts.

  3. Bruise the bodies.

  4. Place them in a clean stewpan with the skin and trimmings.

Make the gravy

  1. Add shallots, bay leaf, mace, and peppercorns.

  2. Pour in veal gravy or broth.

  3. Boil briskly until reduced by half.

  4. Strain the gravy.

  5. Press the bones to extract flavor.

  6. Skim off the fat.

  7. Add cayenne.

  8. Add lemon juice.

  9. Heat the game gradually without boiling.

Serve

  1. Arrange fried bread around a dish.

  2. Place the birds in the center.

  3. Pour the sauce over them.

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Pheasant + shallottop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together89 recipes

    Shared aroma: geraniol (rose, geranium).

  4. Shallot + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,898 recipes

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

  5. Shallot + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,245 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Remains of roasted game
Provides the main meat and flavor, with the bones adding body to the sauce.
Veal gravy or strong broth
Forms the liquid base, and reducing it concentrates flavor and gives the sauce body.
Shallots
Add a mild savoury sweetness that rounds out the gravy.

The step that matters

Heat the game gradually without boiling. Boiling toughens cooked meat and can make it dry and stringy, so gentle heating keeps the birds tender while warming them through.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pheasant, shallot, veal, pepper, lemon, bread):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against pheasant, shallot, veal, pepper, lemon, bread. 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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