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A Salmi, or Hash of Wild Fowl

A hash of wild fowl seasoned with port or claret, gravy, cayenne pepper, lemon juice, and optional Christopher North’s sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 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 ↓

A Salmi, or Hash of Wild Fowl

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the sauce

  1. For a common hash, boil the skin and trimmings in broth or gravy with eschalots until flavorful.

  2. Strain the mixture.

  3. Heat the strained mixture.

  4. Thicken with brown roux or browned flour.

  5. Add a glass of port wine, lemon juice, and cayenne or Christopher North's sauce to taste.

Warm and serve

  1. Carve the wild fowl neatly and remove the skin.

  2. Warm the carved birds in the sauce until hot, but do not boil.

  3. Mix port or claret with the gravy and season with cayenne pepper.

  4. Add the juice of half a small lemon before serving.

  5. Place fried sippets around the dish and serve hot.

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. Bread + port winetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together321 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  3. Pepper + breadtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,964 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  4. Lemon + flourtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,404 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + saucetop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,078 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Wild fowl
Provides the main meat, which is carved and gently warmed in the sauce.
Brown roux or browned flour
Thickens the sauce and adds a toasted, nutty colour and flavour.
Port wine
Adds sweetness, depth and colour to the sauce.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich sauce.
Broth or gravy
Forms the liquid base of the sauce, carrying the flavour of the skin and trimmings.

The step that matters

Warm the birds without boiling. Boiling toughens the proteins in cooked meat and can make it dry and stringy, so the carved birds should only be heated through gently in the sauce.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pepper, bread, flour, port wine, sauce):

  1. Figfits better
  2. Plumfits about as well
  3. Raisinfits about as well
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, bread, flour, port wine, sauce. 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.

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