Skip to main content
Main

Salmi of Woodcock

Salmi of Woodcock is a stew of roasted woodcock with pork, giblets, and a butter‑flour sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

Salmi of Woodcock

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the birds

  1. Cut the roasted woodcock into quarters.

Stew the gravy

  1. In a chafing dish, combine bits of pork, giblets, necks, and enough water to stew them.

  2. Add the quartered birds to the gravy, cover, and cook until tender.

Finish and serve

  1. Remove the birds and arrange them neatly on toast.

  2. Strain the gravy, return it to the chafing dish, and add butter rolled in flour, lemon juice, and brown sherry.

  3. Boil the mixture and pour it over the salmi.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  3. Butter + sherrytop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,505 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  4. Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  5. Flour + lemontop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,404 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

Woodcock
Provides the main meat, which finishes cooking gently in the gravy until tender.
Butter rolled in flour
Flour and butter thicken the strained gravy and give it a smooth, rich body.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich gravy and balances its savoury flavour.
Brown sherry
Adds depth and a mellow, slightly sweet aroma to the finished gravy.

The step that matters

Boiling the thickened gravy. Flour must be cooked through after it is added, or the gravy tastes raw and floury. Boiling the mixture after the butter and flour are added lets the starch swell and thicken smoothly, while the lemon juice and sherry are added before the final boil.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Applefits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pork, butter, flour, sherry. 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

Lemon SauceLemon Sauce236 recipesPork CakePork Cake107 recipesRoast PorkRoast Pork82 recipesTomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipes