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Salmis Au Bernadin

A sauce made from roasted woodcocks or snipes, livers, lemon, mustard, wine, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Salmis Au Bernadin

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the birds

  1. Roast the woodcocks or snipes, but do not overcook them.

  2. Divide the birds into wings, legs, breasts, and rumps.

  3. In a silver dish, crush the livers and trails of the birds.

Make the sauce

  1. Add the lemon juice and thin lemon peel to the crushed livers.

  2. Season the bird pieces with salt, spices, mustard, and white wine.

  3. Place the mixture on a chafing dish over a flame, stirring well.

  4. Ensure the mixture does not boil; heat until warm.

  5. Sprinkle with oil, reduce the heat, and stir for a few minutes.

Serve

  1. Serve immediately while very hot.

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. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. Pepper + mustardtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,430 recipes

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

  3. Lemon + white winetop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,832 recipes

    Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).

  4. Lemon + mustardtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,816 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Pepper + white winetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,433 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Woodcocks or snipes
Provide the main cooked meat, whose pieces are warmed in the sauce.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich liver and game flavours.
White wine
Adds moisture and acidity to loosen and flavour the sauce.
Mustard
Adds sharp, pungent flavour that balances the richness of the livers.
Oil
Adds fat and gloss, giving the sauce a smooth, rounded finish.

The step that matters

Keep the mixture from boiling. Boiling can toughen the delicate cooked meat and cause the emulsified oil and liver mixture to separate, so gentle heat keeps it smooth.

Swap the mustard

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lemon, pepper, white wine):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Spinachfits better
  4. Mustardthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lemon, pepper, white wine. 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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