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Pheasants and Partridges

Roasted pheasants or partridges dusted with flour, basted in butter, served with a mutton gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Pheasants and Partridges

Ingredients

Directions

Roast the birds

  1. Spit the pheasants or partridges and lay them down.

  2. Dust the birds with flour and baste them often with fresh butter.

  3. Keep the birds at a good distance from the fire and roast for about 30 minutes.

Make the gravy and serve

  1. Place the scrag of mutton in a saucepan.

  2. Add the lemon pickle, catsup, and browning to the saucepan.

  3. Strain the gravy and pour a little into the dish with the birds.

  4. Serve the remaining gravy in a separate bowl.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: acetaldehyde (pungent, ethereal).

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

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

  4. Butter + muttontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,781 recipes

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

  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

Pheasants or partridges
The main meat, cooked whole on the spit until done.
Fresh butter
Basting adds moisture and helps the skin brown as the birds roast.
Flour
Dusting the birds helps form a crisp, browned surface.
Scrag of mutton
Simmered to make the savoury base of the gravy.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pheasant, flour, butter, mutton):

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Coconutfits about as well
  3. Lemonthe original
  4. Applefits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against pheasant, flour, butter, mutton. 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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