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Grouse Soup

A soup made from roasted grouse, ham, vegetables, stock, spices, and claret.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Thyme and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,057 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Grouse Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the grouse

  1. Roast the grouse for 20 minutes, then remove the breasts and set aside.

  2. Pound the remaining meat in a mortar and fry in a little butter with the ham, carrot, onion, bay leaf, thyme, and parsley until lightly browned.

Make the soup

  1. Add the stock and the bones of the grouse, then stew gently for 1 hour, skimming off the fat.

  2. Strain the soup and add salt, cayenne, pounded mace, and brown thickening.

  3. Simmer for another 30 minutes.

Finish and serve

  1. A few minutes before serving, add the sliced breasts of the grouse and the claret.

  2. Heat the soup again 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. Thyme + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Carrot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

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

  3. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  4. Carrot + thymetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  5. Thyme + peppertop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

What each ingredient does

Grouse
Provides the main meaty flavour, with the bones adding body to the stock.
Ham
Adds savoury depth when fried with the vegetables before the stock goes in.
Brown thickening
Brown roux thickens the soup and adds a toasted, nutty colour and flavour.
Claret
Adds acidity and wine flavour to the finished soup.

The step that matters

Frying the meat and vegetables until lightly browned. Browning builds deep savoury flavour through the Maillard reaction. Pale frying gives a flat soup, while over-browning can make it bitter.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (ham, carrot, onion, thyme, parsley, pepper):

  1. Marjoramfits better
  2. Celeryfits better
  3. Winter savoryfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against ham, carrot, onion, thyme, parsley, 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.

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