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Roast Ptarmigans

Roasted ptarmigans served on buttered toast with brown gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Roast Ptarmigans

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Pluck, draw, and truss the ptarmigans as you would with grouse.

Roast and baste

  1. Roast them before a brisk fire for about 1 hour.

  2. Flour and froth the birds nicely.

Serve

  1. Serve on buttered toast with a tureen of brown gravy.

  2. If desired, serve with bread sauce and substitute fried bread crumbs for the toasted bread.

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 + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  2. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + breadtop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together10,383 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

Ptarmigans
Provide the main lean meat, which is cooked by roasting until tender.
Flour
Coats the birds so they brown and form a crisp surface as they roast.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, helping the frothed coating brown and giving flavor to the toast.
Brown gravy
Adds moisture and savory flavor to the lean birds when served.

The step that matters

Roasting time. Ptarmigans are very lean, so roasting for too long dries out the meat. Timing the roast carefully keeps it moist while the outside browns.

“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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