Skip to main content
Main

A Salmi Op Moor Fowl, Pheasants, or Partridges

A stew of roasted game (moor fowl, pheasants, or partridges) simmered in veal gravy with aromatics and optional wine.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Pepper and lemon 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 ↓

A Salmi Op Moor Fowl, Pheasants, or Partridges

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the game

  1. Carve the game neatly, removing all skin and fat from the legs, wings, and breasts.

  2. Bruise the bodies.

  3. Place them in a clean stewpan with the skin and trimmings.

Make the gravy

  1. Add shallots, bay leaf, mace, and peppercorns.

  2. Pour in the veal gravy or broth.

  3. Boil briskly until reduced by half.

  4. Strain the gravy.

  5. Press the bones to extract flavor.

  6. Skim off the fat.

  7. Add cayenne and lemon juice to the gravy.

Serve

  1. Heat the game gradually in the gravy without allowing it to boil.

  2. Arrange fried bread or sippets around a serving dish.

  3. Place the game in the center.

  4. Bring the sauce to a boil.

  5. Pour it over the game before serving.

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. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  2. Shallot + lemontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,523 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

    Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).

  4. Shallot + white winetop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together881 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  5. Pheasant + shallottop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together89 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

Game meat
Provides the main flavor and meaty body of the stew.
Veal gravy or strong broth
Forms the savory liquid base that carries the flavor of the whole dish.
Shallots
Add a mild, sweet savoriness that deepens as the gravy reduces.
Dry white wine
Adds acidity and aromatic depth to the gravy when used.

The step that matters

Heat the game gradually without boiling. High heat toughens and dries lean meat proteins, so gentle warming keeps the game tender and moist in the gravy.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Tarragonfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pheasant, shallot, veal, pepper, lemon, bread, 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.

You might also like

Brown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesLemon SauceLemon Sauce236 recipesWhite BreadWhite Bread80 recipesBread OmeletteBread Omelette60 recipes