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Soup

Pheasant Soup— Another Way

A pheasant soup made by simmering roasted pheasant joints in beef stock, then puréeing the meat and adding butter, salt, mace, and cayenne.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Pheasant and beef work together. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 131 recipes. Both carry decanal, which smells soap, orange peel. The science ↓

Pheasant Soup— Another Way

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the pheasant

  1. Roast the pheasant according to previous directions.

  2. Remove the flesh from the breast and wings, skin it, and set aside.

  3. Cut the rest of the bird into joints and place in a stewpan.

Make the soup

  1. Pour the beef stock over the joints and bring to a boil.

  2. Simmer gently for three hours.

  3. Strain the soup and rub the meat through a sieve.

Finish and serve

  1. Pound the breast meat in a mortar until smooth.

  2. Mix the smooth meat with butter, salt, mace, and cayenne.

  3. Combine this paste with the soup and heat until hot.

  4. Skim carefully and 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. Pheasant + beeftop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together131 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  2. Beef + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,847 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

  3. Pheasant + buttertop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together511 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Butter + macetop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together11,405 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

  5. Beef + macetop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,969 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

Butter and mace barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 11,405 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Pheasant
Provides the main meat and the rich flavor of the soup.
Beef stock
Forms the liquid base and carries flavor from the simmered bird.
Fresh butter
Adds fat and a smooth, rounded richness to the meat paste.

The step that matters

Skim carefully and serve. Skimming removes fat and fine particles that rise to the surface during simmering, keeping the soup clear and preventing a greasy mouthfeel.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Pepperfits better
  3. Nutmegfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pheasant, beef, 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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