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Guinea-fowl Soup

Soup made from the bones, skin, trimmings, and forcemeat of a roasted guinea‑fowl, simmered with stock, ham, onion, celery seed, salt, pepper, nutmeg, and rice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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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 ↓

Guinea-fowl Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the stock

  1. Remove all the meat from the cold roasted guinea-fowl and place the bones, skin, trimmings, and forcemeat in a saucepan.

  2. Add 2 quarts of stock, the slice of ham, onion, and bruised celery seed tied in muslin.

  3. Simmer gently for 2 hours.

Finish and serve

  1. Pound the meat with 1 teaspoon of salt, ½ teaspoon of pepper, and ⅛ of a grated nutmeg.

  2. Strain the soup and return it to the saucepan.

  3. Add the pounded meat and 1 heaped tablespoon of ground rice mixed with a little cold water.

  4. Boil for 20 minutes longer and serve with sippets of toast.

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. Celery + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

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

  2. Onion + celerytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,518 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

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

  4. Celery + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,331 recipes

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

  5. Celery + ricetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,169 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Ground rice
Thickens the soup as it boils, giving it a smoother, fuller body.
Guinea-fowl remains
Bones and skin release flavor into the stock, while the pounded meat adds body.
Stock
Forms the liquid base that carries the flavor of the meat, ham, and aromatics.
Ham
Adds savory, salty depth to the stock during the long simmer.

The step that matters

Adding the ground rice. Ground rice must be mixed smoothly with cold water first, because starch added directly to hot liquid clumps. Once stirred in and boiled, the starch swells and thickens the soup.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Carrotfits better
  2. Mustardfits better
  3. Capsicumfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against ham, celery, pepper, nutmeg, rice. 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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