Skip to main content
Main

Pheasant with Truffles

Pheasant stuffed with truffles, parsley, and thyme, then roasted and served with brown sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Parsley and thyme match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,057 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Pheasant with Truffles

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Prepare the pheasant for boiling by barding the breast with bacon.

  2. Stuff the inside with truffles, parsley, and thyme.

Roast and serve

  1. Roast the pheasant until well done and browned.

  2. Serve garnished with brown sauce containing truffles and mushrooms.

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. Parsley + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Truffle + mushroomtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,900 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

  3. Thyme + mushroomtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  4. Parsley + mushroomtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,132 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  5. Pheasant + thymetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together97 recipes

    Shared aroma: geraniol (rose, geranium).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Pheasant
Forms the main body of the dish as the lean meat that is roasted.
Truffles
Add a strong earthy aroma that perfumes the bird from inside.
Bacon
Lays fat over the breast, adding moisture and protecting the lean meat as it roasts.

The step that matters

Roasting the pheasant until well done. Pheasant is lean and dries out easily when overcooked. The bacon barding adds fat and moisture, but the bird still needs careful timing so the meat stays juicy while the skin browns.

Swap the parsley

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pheasant, truffle, thyme, sauce, mushroom):

  1. Marjoramfits better
  2. Garlicfits about as well
  3. Parsleythe original
  4. Tarragonfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against pheasant, truffle, thyme, sauce, mushroom. 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.

You might also like

Mushroom SoupMushroom Soup60 recipesPheasant SoupPheasant Soup25 recipesTomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipes