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Devilled Game

Game bird seasoned with salt, cayenne, curry, mustard, brains, egg yolk, mace, lemon peel, sauce, wine, sugar, lemon juice, butter, and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 16 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 ↓

Devilled Game

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the bird

  1. Split the game bird and season it with a mixture of salt, cayenne pepper, curry powder, and French mustard.

  2. Remove the brains and mix them with the egg yolk, mace, lemon peel, and sauce of your choice.

  3. Add wine, cayenne pepper, sugar, and lemon or orange juice to the mixture.

Cook and serve

  1. Roll the butter in flour and place the bird and sauce in a metal dish over low heat.

  2. Cover the dish and shake it occasionally until most of the sauce is absorbed.

  3. Serve the dish warm.

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. Ketchup + sugartop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together260 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Pepper + mustardtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,430 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  4. Mustard + lemontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,816 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Lemon + winetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,157 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

Game bird
Provides the main meat, which is cooked gently in the sauce until tender.
Egg yolk
Adds richness and helps bind the sauce into a smooth, thick mixture.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, and the flour coating helps thicken the sauce.
Mustard
Adds sharp, pungent flavor that balances the richness of the sauce.
Wine
Adds acidity and liquid that flavors the sauce as it reduces.

The step that matters

Cook covered over low heat, shaking occasionally. Low, gentle heat keeps the sauce from scorching and drying out while it thickens. Covering the dish traps moisture, and shaking keeps the bird coated as the liquid is absorbed.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pepper, mustard, egg, lemon, ketchup, wine, sugar):

  1. Tarragonfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Parsleyfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, mustard, egg, lemon, ketchup, wine, sugar. 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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