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Grouse Soup

A hearty soup made from roasted grouse, stock, vegetables, herbs, and flour, served with fried bread.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 16 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and thyme match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,057 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Grouse Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the stock

  1. Remove the meat from the roasted grouse.

  2. Reserve some pieces for serving.

  3. Place the bones and remaining meat into 2 quarts of stock.

  4. Boil the stock for 30 minutes.

Make the soup

  1. In a stew-pan, melt the butter.

  2. Add the onion, carrot, turnip, parsley, thyme, bay leaves, peppercorns, and mace to the pan.

  3. Stir the mixture for a few minutes.

  4. Add 1 pint of stock to the pan.

  5. Simmer until the vegetables are tender.

  6. In a mortar, pound the reserved meat.

  7. Add the pounded meat to the stew-pan.

  8. Add the flour. Mix well.

  9. Simmer for 20 minutes, stirring continuously.

  10. Season with salt and sugar as needed.

  11. Strain the soup into another stew-pan.

  12. Bring the strained soup to a boil.

  13. Skim the surface.

Serve

  1. Serve over the reserved meat slices and fried 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. Parsley + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Carrot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  3. Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Turnip + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,842 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Carrot + thymetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

What each ingredient does

Grouse
Its meat and bones give the soup its main flavour and body.
Butter
Melted fat softens the vegetables and carries the aromatic herbs and spices.
Flour
Thickens the soup as it simmers, giving it body.
Onion
Sweetens and deepens the savoury base as it softens in the butter.

The step that matters

Adding the flour. Flour added to hot liquid clumps unless it is mixed in thoroughly, and it needs simmering to cook out its raw taste and thicken evenly.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (onion, carrot, turnip, butter, parsley, thyme, flour):

  1. Marjoramfits better
  2. Capersfits better
  3. Celeryfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, carrot, turnip, butter, parsley, thyme, 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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