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Small Pheasants, the Miller's Fashion

Roasted pheasant served with a milk and crumb sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and shallot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,081 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Small Pheasants, the Miller's Fashion

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).

  2. Dip the pheasant in flour.

Roast the pheasant

  1. Shake off excess flour occasionally while roasting.

Make the sauce

  1. In a saucepan, combine the crumbs of the French rolls, milk, shallot, bay leaf, butter, pepper, and salt, then bring to a boil.

  2. Remove the shallot and bay leaf from the sauce.

Serve

  1. Place the buttered toast on a serving dish, pour the sauce over it, and place the roasted pheasant on top.

  2. Serve with gravy on the side 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. Flour + shallottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,081 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  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. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter 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

Pheasant
Lean meat that becomes tender and cooked through as it roasts.
Flour
Coats the pheasant, helping its surface brown and set during roasting.
French rolls
Crumbs soak up the milk and thicken the sauce.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the sauce, adding richness and body.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a smooth, rounded flavor to the sauce.
Shallot
Adds a mild onion-like aroma that flavors the milk as it heats.

The step that matters

Bring the sauce to a boil. Milk scorches easily on the base of a pan and can boil over quickly. The bread crumbs need the heat to swell and thicken the sauce, so the mixture should be watched closely until it reaches a boil.

Swap the shallot

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

  1. Potatofits about as well
  2. Leekfits about as well
  3. Capsicumfits about as well
  4. Shallotthe original

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