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To Boil Pheaſants

Pheasants boiled and served with a cream and celery sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Cream and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

To Boil Pheaſants

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Boil the pheasants in a large pot of water.

  2. If the pheasants are large, cook for 45 minutes; if small, cook for 30 minutes.

Make the sauce

  1. Stew the white celery.

  2. Thicken the celery with cream and a bit of butter rolled in flour.

Serve

  1. Place the boiled pheasants in a dish.

  2. Pour the sauce over the pheasants.

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. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Pheasant + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together225 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetaldehyde (pungent, ethereal).

  4. Celery + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,905 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Pheasant + creamtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together112 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Pheasants
Provide the main meat, which becomes tender through long simmering in water.
White celery
Stewed to add a mild, savoury vegetable flavour to the sauce.
Cream
Adds richness and body to the sauce, giving it a smooth texture.
Flour
Thickens the sauce when cooked with butter, giving it a smooth consistency.

Swap the celery

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pheasant, cream, butter, flour):

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Capersfits better
  3. Tarragonfits about as well
  4. Celerythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pheasant, cream, butter, flour. 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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