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To Roast Partridges, Pheasants, Quails or Grouse

A method for roasting partridges, pheasants, quails or grouse with optional fat salt pork, butter, and gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Pheasant and pork work together. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 240 recipes. Both carry decanal, which smells soap, orange peel. The science ↓

To Roast Partridges, Pheasants, Quails or Grouse

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 the birds

  1. Carefully cut out all the shot from the birds.

  2. Wash the birds thoroughly but quickly using soda in the water, then rinse again and dry with a clean cloth.

  3. Stuff the birds and sew them up, or leave them unstuffed.

  4. Skewer the legs and wings to the body.

  5. Lard the breast with thin slices of fat salt pork, if using.

Roast and make the gravy

  1. Place the birds in a 400°F (200°C) oven and baste with butter and water, seasoning with coarse sea salt and black pepper.

  2. Make a gravy from the drippings thickened with browned flour, boil, and serve in a boat.

Broiling option and serving

  1. For broiling, split the birds down the back, place them inside down on a gridiron, cover with a baking tin, and broil slowly at first.

  2. Serve with cream gravy.

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. Pheasant + porktop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together240 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Pork + buttertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,933 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

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

    Shared aroma: acetaldehyde (pungent, ethereal).

  5. Pepper + porktop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,121 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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

Butter
Adds fat and richness, helping the skin brown and the birds stay moist while basting.
Browned flour
Thickens the pan drippings into gravy and adds a toasted, nutty flavour.
Fat salt pork
Adds fat that bastes the lean breast meat, keeping it moist and flavourful as it roasts.

The step that matters

Basting the birds in the oven. Lean game birds dry out easily. Regular basting with butter and water adds moisture and fat to the surface, which helps the skin brown evenly and keeps the breast juicy.

“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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