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Game Soup

A hearty soup made with pheasant, grouse, ham, herbs, and cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and turnip match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,585 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Game Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the game

  1. Joint the birds and fry in butter in a stewpan until brown with the ham.

  2. Add the sliced onion, cut turnips, and wine.

  3. Cook for 10 minutes.

Simmer and finish

  1. Pour in the stock, add herbs and seasoning, and let simmer for 1 hour and 45 minutes.

  2. Remove the game, take the meat from the bones, and pound it with the turnips and a little stock.

  3. Pass the mixture through a fine sieve.

  4. Mix the flour smoothly with the cream and add to the stock, stirring until it boils.

  5. Cook for 5 more minutes.

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Beef + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,092 recipes

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

  3. Turnip + flourtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Beef + pheasanttop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together131 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Beef + peppertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,971 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Pheasant and grouse
Provide the main meat and rich, gamey flavour that the soup is built on.
Lean ham
Adds savoury, salty depth as it browns with the birds in butter.
Turnips
Pounded into the soup, they thicken it and add mild sweetness.
Flour
Thickens the stock with the cream so the soup becomes smooth and body-rich.
Cream
Adds richness and a silky texture to the finished soup.

The step that matters

Adding the flour and cream mixture. Flour must be mixed smoothly with the cream before it goes into the stock, otherwise it clumps. Stirring until the soup boils lets the starch swell and thicken it evenly.

Swap the turnip

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

  1. Leekfits better
  2. Potatofits about as well
  3. Chivefits about as well
  4. Turnipthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, pheasant, ham, pepper, onion, flour, butter. 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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