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Moor Game Soup

A soup made from boiled turkey stock and game parts with vegetables and ham.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and celery match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,173 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Moor Game Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the stock

  1. Combine the pot-liquor of a boiled turkey, the inferior parts of game, and 2 quarts of water in a pot.

  2. Boil the mixture until it is reduced to 2 quarts, then strain the liquid.

Prepare and brown the game

  1. Skin the birds and cut them into neat pieces.

  2. Fry the pieces in butter with the ham, onion, carrot, and turnip until browned.

Finish the soup

  1. Drain the game and add it to the stock along with the celery and parsley.

  2. Optionally add Jamaica peppers and cloves.

  3. Avoid excessive seasoning to preserve the flavor of the game.

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 + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Turnip + celerytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Onion + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 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

Turkey pot-liquor
Forms the savoury liquid base that carries the soup's flavour.
Inferior parts of game
Contributes a deep, rich gamey flavour to the stock as it reduces.
Butter
Provides fat for browning the game pieces and adds richness.
Ham
Adds salty, savoury depth that develops further when fried.
Onion
Browns to add sweetness and savoury depth to the frying stage.
Celery
Adds fresh, aromatic vegetal flavour to the finished soup.

The step that matters

Browning the game pieces. Frying the pieces in butter until browned triggers the Maillard reaction, which builds deep savoury flavour. Crowded or wet pieces steam instead of browning, leaving the soup flatter and paler.

Swap the turnip

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (turkey, liver, butter, ham, onion, carrot, celery):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against turkey, liver, butter, ham, onion, carrot, celery. 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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