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To Fry Pheasant or Young Chicken

A pheasant or young chicken fried with butter, cream, curry powder, and brown flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

To Fry Pheasant or Young Chicken

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Pick, singe, wash, and dry the bird thoroughly.

  2. Season the inside and outside with salt and pepper.

Brown and cook

  1. In a frying pan, heat the butter until hot.

  2. Lay the bird, split up the back and breast upwards, in the pan.

  3. Cover tightly.

  4. Add a little water from time to time.

  5. Turn often.

  6. After one hour, add the cream, a bit of butter the size of a small egg, brown flour, curry powder, salt, and pepper to taste.

  7. Cook slowly for one hour.

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. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Butter + flourtop 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. Pheasant + creamtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together112 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

  5. Flour + peppertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour 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

Pheasant or young chicken
Provides the main meat that is cooked slowly until tender in the covered pan.
Butter
Fat for frying the bird and adds richness to the sauce.
Cream
Adds richness and body to the sauce made in the pan.
Brown flour
Thickens the pan liquid into a sauce and adds a toasted, nutty flavour.

The step that matters

Keep the pan covered and add water only from time to time. Covered slow cooking traps steam so the meat stays moist and tender while the bird cooks through. Lifting the lid too often lets moisture escape and can dry the meat, so the bird may turn tough.

“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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