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To Boast the Pintail, or Bea Pheasant

A roasted pintail or pheasant dusted with flour, basted with butter, and seasoned with cayenne pepper and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 Bea 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 your oven to 400°F (200°C).

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

Roast

  1. Baste the pheasant with butter frequently while roasting.

  2. Roast for 25 to 30 minutes, turning it briskly.

  3. Remove the pheasant and let it rest before serving for 2 to 3 minutes.

Finish and serve

  1. Score the breast and sprinkle with cayenne and fine salt before serving.

  2. Serve with lemon and optional brown gravy or Christopher North's sauce.

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 + saucetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,338 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

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

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 bea pheasant
Forms the main meat of the dish, cooking to tender, juicy meat when roasted.
Butter
Basting adds fat and moisture to the surface, helping it brown and stay tender.
Flour
A light dusting helps the skin brown and crisp during roasting.
Lemon
Adds acidity that brightens the rich flavour of the roasted meat.

The step that matters

Roast for 25 to 30 minutes, turning briskly. Turning the bird keeps it cooking evenly so the surface browns without the thinner parts drying out. Overcooking toughens the meat, so timing matters as much as heat.

“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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