Why it works: Butter and watercress work together. They rank in the top 24% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 842 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓
Roast Woodcock and Snipe
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare the birds
Pluck the birds carefully, leaving the skin intact.
Cut off the wings at the first joint, leaving the head and feet on.
Do not draw the birds.
Press the legs to the side and pass the beak through them and the body.
Roast
Brush the birds with butter or dripping.
Place a piece of slit bacon on the breast.
Roast for about 15 minutes.
Place toast under the birds to catch the gravy.
Serve
Serve the birds on the toast and garnish with fresh watercress.
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.
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Butter + watercresstop 24% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together842 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Woodcock or snipe
- The main meat; roasting it whole with skin intact keeps the flesh moist.
- Butter or good dripping
- Adds fat that coats the birds, promoting browning and rich flavour.
- Slit bacon
- Lays fat over the breast as it cooks, adding moisture and savoury flavour.
- Toast
- Soaks up the drippings and gravy that fall from the roasting birds.
The step that matters
Leave the birds undrawn. Keeping the innards in place adds richness and flavour to the drippings that run onto the toast, which is the traditional point of this preparation. Drawing them removes this.
“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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