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Venison SouP

A hearty venison soup with ham, onion, celery, mace, butter, and Madeira or port.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and celery match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 16,012 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Venison SouP

Oven, in the book's wordsA brisk oven

Ingredients

Directions

Make the soup

  1. Combine ham, venison, onion, pepper, and enough water to cover in a covered pot. Stew gently for 1 hour.

  2. Skim the surface and add 1 quart of boiling water, celery, and mace. Boil gently for 2.5 hours.

  3. Add butter and Madeira or port. Boil for an additional 15 minutes.

Serve

  1. Serve with the meat in the soup.

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 + celerytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  2. Onion + celerytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,518 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Ham + venisontop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

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

Venison
Provides the main meaty flavor and body of the soup as it simmers for hours.
Ham
Adds savory, salty depth to the broth as it stews with the venison.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, silky mouthfeel to the finished soup.
Madeira or port
Adds sweetness and aromatic depth to the broth near the end of cooking.

The step that matters

Skim the surface before adding the boiling water. Skimming removes foam and fat that rise from the meat during stewing, keeping the broth clear and clean-tasting before the long simmer.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (ham, venison, onion, pepper, celery, butter, flour):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against ham, venison, onion, pepper, celery, butter, flour. 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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