Name: To Roast Snipe and Woodcock
Ingredients: snipe or woodcock; thin slices of pickled pork; butter; black pepper; coarse sea salt; buttered toast; parsley sprigs; lemon slices

Why it works: Parsley and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

To Roast Snipe and Woodcock

Ingredients

Directions

Pluck the birds and remove the skin from the heads and necks.
Place the heads under the wings and season each bird with black pepper.
Lay a thin slice of pickled pork across the breast bone of each bird and skewer it.
Prepare a bright fire and place each bird over a slice of buttered toast to catch the drippings.
Add a little butter to the pan for basting and baste each bird well every five minutes.
Cook for twenty minutes, sprinkle a little coarse sea salt over each bird, and serve quickly on the toast.
Garnish with sprigs of parsley and slices of lemon.

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.

Parsley + lemontop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together14,037 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).
Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together34,122 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together27,047 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
Pork + buttertop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together13,933 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).
Butter + parsleytop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together28,563 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).