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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: Venison and madeira wine work together. They rank in the top 21% of all ingredient pairs, and 21 recipes mention both. The science ↓

The recipe

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 aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

  1. Venison + madeira winetop 21% of all pairs
    Aroma overlaplow
    Mentioned together21 recipes
  2. Celery + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together16,001 recipes

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

  3. Onion + celerytop 5% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together18,506 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Mace + peppertop 6% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together12,257 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  5. Venison + hamtop 6% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together85 recipes

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

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.

Flavor stand-ins for the mace

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

  1. Thymebetter flavor fit
  2. Parsleybetter flavor fit
  3. Marjorambetter flavor fit
  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. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).

“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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