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Game Soup

A hearty soup made from game bones, vegetables, barley, and a creamy egg yolk mixture.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and celery match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,173 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Game Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the stock

  1. Break the bones and trimmings of cold game into small pieces and place them in a soup kettle.

  2. Add 2 quarts of stock or cold water, along with the chopped carrot, onion, turnip, and celery.

  3. Bring the soup to a boil.

  4. Skim off any foam.

  5. Reduce the heat.

  6. Let it simmer for 3 hours.

  7. Strain the soup.

  8. Remove the fat.

Finish and serve

  1. Boil 2 tablespoons of barley until soft.

  2. Take half of the cooked barley and mix it with the yolks of 3 hard-boiled eggs and 1 tablespoon of cream.

  3. Stir the egg mixture into the soup slowly.

  4. Add the remaining barley.

  5. 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.

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. Carrot + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Turnip + barleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together629 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Turnip + celerytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Onion + turniptop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Egg yolks
Enrich the soup and thicken it slightly with a smooth, velvety texture.
Barley
Adds body and a soft, starchy texture to the finished soup.
Cream
Adds richness and softens the flavor of the egg mixture.

The step that matters

Stir the egg mixture into the soup slowly. Egg yolks can curdle or scramble if they meet hot liquid too quickly. Adding the mixture slowly while stirring lets it warm gradually and blend smoothly into the soup.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (carrot, turnip, celery, barley, egg, cream):

  1. Leekfits better
  2. Parsnipfits better
  3. Spinachfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against carrot, turnip, celery, barley, egg, cream. 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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