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Pheasants and Partridges

Roasted pheasants or partridges served with a gravy made from mutton, lemon pickle, catsup, and browning.

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 and lay down the birds.

  2. Dust them with flour.

  3. Baste often with fresh butter, keeping them at a distance from the fire.

  4. Roast for about 30 minutes.

Make the gravy

  1. For gravy, place the mutton in a saucepan with lemon pickle, catsup, and browning.

  2. Strain the gravy.

Serve

  1. Serve some gravy with the birds, keeping the rest in a separate dish.

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
Form the main body of the dish, cooked by roasting over the fire.
Fresh butter
Adds moisture and richness to the skin as it bastes the birds.
Flour
Dusted on the birds to help the surface brown and form a light crust.
Mutton
Provides meaty, savoury flavour and body to the gravy.
Lemon pickle
Adds acidity and sharp tang to the gravy.

The step that matters

Baste often and keep the birds away from the fire. Frequent basting with butter keeps the surface moist so it does not dry out, while distance from the fire lets the heat cook the birds through before the outside scorches and darkens too quickly.

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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