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Game Soup

Soup made from the meat and bones of game birds, carrots, ham, onions, and cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,555 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Game Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the broth

  1. Remove all the white meat from the bones of the birds and pound it in a mortar.

  2. In a saucepan, combine the bones, trimmings, carrots, ham, pepper, salt, onions, and stock or water.

  3. Simmer gently for 1.5 hours until the vegetables are tender.

Make the soup

  1. Remove the vegetables from the broth.

  2. Mix the vegetables with the pounded meat.

  3. Press the mixture through a fine sieve, adding broth as needed.

  4. Return the broth to the saucepan and heat until hot but not boiling.

Finish and serve

  1. Before serving, let it cool slightly, then mix in the beaten egg yolks and cream.

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 + peppertop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,555 recipes

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

  2. Carrot + oniontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

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

  3. Pepper + oniontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  4. Ham + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,526 recipes

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

  5. Ham + oniontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,159 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Birds
Provide the meat that is pounded and pressed into the soup, giving body and flavor.
Carrots
Add sweetness and body as they soften and break down into the broth.
Onions
Contribute savory depth and sweetness as they cook down in the broth.
Egg yolks
Enrich the soup and thicken it slightly when gently heated.
Cream
Adds richness and a smooth, velvety mouthfeel to the finished soup.

The step that matters

Mixing in the egg yolks and cream. If the soup is too hot, the egg yolks can scramble and curdle instead of thickening it smoothly. Letting it cool slightly first helps keep the texture silky.

Swap the carrot

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

  1. Spinachfits better
  2. Potatofits better
  3. Leekfits better
  4. Carrotthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against ham, pepper, onion, 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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