Name: Broiled Pheasant or Prairie Chicken
Ingredients: 1 pheasant or prairie chicken; Coarse sea salt; Black pepper; Butter; Fried mush (for breakfast); Toast (for dinner); Currant jelly (for serving); Gravy (made from boiling liquor, butter, and flour)

Why it works: Butter and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Broiled Pheasant or Prairie Chicken

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the bird

Scald the bird.
Skin the bird.
Cut off the breast.
Joint the rest.
Remove all shot.
Boil the joints in hot water until tender.
Leave the breast unboiled.

Season and broil

Rub the boiled pieces with salt, pepper, and butter.
Broil the boiled pieces with the breast over a brisk fire.
Place a lump of butter on each piece.
Set in the oven for a few minutes.

Serve

For breakfast, serve on fried mush.
For dinner, serve on toast with currant jelly.
Alternatively, serve on toast cut into 2-inch squares.
Top with gravy made from the boiling liquor thickened with butter and flour.

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.

Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together124,287 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Pheasant + flourtop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together225 recipes

Shared aroma: acetaldehyde (pungent, ethereal).
Butter + curranttop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together7,856 recipes

Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).
Pepper + flourtop 19% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together50,459 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Pheasant + peppertop 20% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together462 recipes

Shared aroma: sabinene (woody, terpenic).

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

Pheasant: Provides the meat that is boiled, broiled and served.
Butter: Adds richness and moisture and helps the surface brown under the broiler.
Flour: Thickens the boiling liquor into a smooth gravy.

The step that matters

Broil the boiled pieces with the breast over a brisk fire. Boiled meat is already cooked and dry on the outside, so a hot, fast broil with butter is needed to brown the surface and add flavor without drying the meat further.

Swap the currant

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

Lemonfits better
Raisinfits better
Limefits better
Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pheasant, pepper, 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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Broiled Pheasant or Prairie Chicken