Name: Pheasant Soup
Ingredients: 2 pheasants; ½ lb. water; 2 slices of ham; 2 large onions, sliced; 1 head of celery; crumb of 2 French rolls; yolks of 2 hard-boiled eggs; salt to taste; cayenne pepper to taste

Why it works: Celery and pepper 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 ↓

Pheasant Soup

Ingredients

Directions

In a pot, combine the pheasants, water, ham, onions, and celery.
Bring to a boil, then simmer until the pheasants are cooked through.
Remove the pheasants, shred the meat, and return it to the pot.
Add the French roll crumbs and stir well.
Mix in the yolks of the hard-boiled eggs, and season with salt and cayenne pepper to taste.

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.

Celery + peppertop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together16,012 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Onion + celerytop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together18,518 recipes

Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).
Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together68,474 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Pheasant + celerytop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together124 recipes

Shared aroma: sabinene (woody, terpenic).
Ham + eggtop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together4,526 recipes

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

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 cooks into the broth and is shredded back into the soup.
French roll crumbs: Thicken the soup slightly as they soak up liquid and dissolve.
Hard-boiled egg yolks: Add richness and a smooth, creamy body to the broth.
Onions: Add savoury sweetness and aromatic depth to the broth.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pheasant, ham, celery, egg, pepper):

Mustardfits better
Carrotfits better
Capsicumfits better
Onionthe original

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