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Venison Soup

A hearty soup made with venison, veal, ham, onion, mace, celery, and wine.

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 ↓

Venison Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the soup

  1. In a stewpan, combine venison, veal, and ham.

  2. Pour in cold water and add onion, mace, celery, salt, and pepper.

  3. Simmer for about 3.5 hours until the flavors are extracted.

Finish and serve

  1. Strain the soup through a sieve and thicken with brown thickening.

  2. Stir in the port or Madeira and boil for an additional 15 minutes.

  3. Serve hot.

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. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  4. Venison + hamtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

  5. Veal + hamtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,264 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Breast of venison
Provides the main meat flavor and body as it simmers into the broth.
Knuckle of veal
Adds gelatin from the bones, giving the broth richness and a fuller mouthfeel.
Lean ham
Contributes savory, salty depth to the stock.
Brown thickening
Thickens the strained soup and adds body to the liquid.
Port or madeira wine
Adds sweetness and aromatic depth, and its boiling rounds out the flavor.

The step that matters

Simmer gently over a long time. A long, gentle simmer slowly extracts flavor and gelatin from the meat and bones. Boiling hard can cloud the broth and toughen the meat.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (venison, veal, ham, onion, celery, pepper, madeira wine):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Marjoramfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against venison, veal, ham, onion, celery, pepper, madeira wine. 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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