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Pheasant, Roasted

Roasted pheasant stuffed with beefsteak, coated with bacon, served with gravy, bread sauce, fried breadcrumbs, and watercress.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Watercress and pepper work together. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 983 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Pheasant, Roasted

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Pluck and draw the pheasant, truss it like a roast chicken, leaving the head on.

  2. Stuff the beefsteak inside the pheasant to enhance flavor and moisture.

  3. Cover the breast with thin slices of bacon or lard it with strips of fat bacon.

Roast

  1. Roast in a moderate oven at 350°F (175°C) for 40 to 50 minutes, basting frequently with butter.

  2. When three-quarters cooked, remove the bacon, dredge the breast lightly with flour, and baste again for a nice brown appearance.

Serve

  1. Remove the trussing strings and serve on a hot dish, garnished with well-washed, dried, and seasoned watercress.

  2. Serve the gravy, bread sauce, and fried breadcrumbs separately.

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. Watercress + peppertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together983 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Pheasant + watercresstop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together23 recipes

    Shared aroma: geraniol (rose, geranium).

  3. Bread + watercresstop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together307 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Bread + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,964 recipes

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

  5. Pheasant + breadtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together239 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Pheasant
Is the main cooked meat, which the roasting turns tender and golden.
Beefsteak
Stuffed inside the bird to add moisture as it roasts.
Bacon
Covers the breast to baste it with fat and keep the meat from drying.
Butter (in the method)
Used for basting, adding fat that helps the skin brown and the meat stay moist.
Flour (in the method)
Dusted on the breast to help it brown evenly and form a crisp surface.

The step that matters

Basting and browning the breast late in the roast. Pheasant is lean and dries quickly. Removing the bacon near the end and dusting the breast with flour lets it brown, but the bird can dry out if it overcooks, so watch the time closely.

“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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