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Pheasant Soup

A soup made from pheasants, butter, ham, onions, celery, French roll crumbs, egg yolks, stock, and seasonings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Pheasant Soup

Why it works: Onion and celery are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 18,518 recipes. Both carry guaiacol, which smells smoky, sweet. The science ↓

Pheasant Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the pheasants

  1. Cut up the pheasants.

  2. Flour the pheasants.

  3. Brown the pheasants in the butter and ham without burning.

Make the soup

  1. Place the browned pheasants in a stewpan with the onions, celery, and seasonings.

  2. Simmer for 2 hours.

  3. Strain the soup.

  4. Pound the pheasant breasts with the soaked roll crumbs and egg yolks.

  5. Add the mixture to the soup.

  6. Bring to a boil.

  7. Serve.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  2. Butter + oniontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Pheasant + celerytop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together124 recipes

    Shared aroma: sabinene (woody, terpenic).

  4. Butter + hamtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,475 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

  5. Onion + macetop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together7,078 recipes

    Shared aroma: eugenol (clove, spicy).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Pheasants
Provide the main meat, which becomes tender and flavorful during long simmering.
Butter
Carries flavor and browns the floured pheasant pieces for a richer soup.
French roll crumbs
Soaked and pounded, they add body and thicken the soup slightly.
Hard-boiled egg yolks
Pounded into the mixture, they enrich the soup and give it a smooth, thick texture.
Onions
Release sweetness and aromatic depth as they simmer in the stock.

The step that matters

Browning the pheasants without burning. Browning floured meat in butter builds savory flavor through the Maillard reaction, but scorched butter and flour turn bitter and can taint the whole soup.

Swap the mace

The recipe marks mace as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pheasant, butter, ham, onion, celery, egg):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against pheasant, butter, ham, onion, celery, egg. 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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