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To Boast the Pintail, or Sea Pheasant

A roasted pintail or sea pheasant seasoned with flour, butter, cayenne pepper, sea salt, and lemon.

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

To Boast the Pintail, or Sea Pheasant

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).

Roast

  1. Dust the pheasant with flour and place it in the oven.

  2. Baste the bird with butter frequently while roasting.

  3. Roast for 25 to 30 minutes.

  4. Remove from the oven and let it rest by the fire for 2 to 3 minutes.

Finish and serve

  1. Score the breast and sprinkle with cayenne and coarse sea salt.

  2. Serve with a cut lemon and optional brown gravy.

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. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Pheasant + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together225 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetaldehyde (pungent, ethereal).

  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).

Flour and butter 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

Pintail or sea pheasant
Forms the main body of the dish, providing the meat that is roasted and served.
Butter
Adds fat for basting, promoting browning and a rich, moist surface on the bird.
Flour
Dusted on the bird before roasting, helping the surface brown and develop a crisp exterior.

The step that matters

Baste the bird with butter frequently while roasting. Butter carries heat to the surface and coats the skin, so frequent basting helps it brown evenly and stay moist rather than drying out during the roast.

“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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