Skip to main content
Drink

Game Soup

A hearty soup made from game, calf's foot, ham, carrots, onion, mace, herbs, and water, clarified with egg white and finished with sherry and lemon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Carrot and onion are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 21,601 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Game Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the stock

  1. Combine game, calf's foot, ham, carrots, onion, mace, and herbs in a pot with water.

  2. Cook gently for 3 hours.

Clarify and finish

  1. Strain the soup and clarify it with egg white.

  2. Stir in sherry, lemon slices, hard-boiled egg, and season with pepper and salt.

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 + oniontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

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

  2. Carrot + lemontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,351 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  3. Rabbit + oniontop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,292 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Rabbit + hamtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together273 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Ham + sherrytop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together377 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-ethyl-2-methoxyphenol (smoky, clove).

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

What each ingredient does

Calf's foot
Adds gelatin, giving the soup body and a silky mouthfeel as it simmers.
Game or poultry odds and ends
Provides the main meaty flavor base for the stock.
Ham
Contributes savory, salty depth to the long-simmered broth.
Egg white
Collects suspended particles during clarifying, leaving the soup clear.
Sherry
Adds acidity and aromatic sweetness to brighten the finished broth.

The step that matters

Clarify the strained soup with egg white. The egg white must be whisked into cold soup and heated gently so it forms a raft that traps cloudy particles. If the soup boils hard or the raft breaks apart, the broth stays murky.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (rabbit, ham, carrot, onion, egg, sherry, lemon):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against rabbit, ham, carrot, onion, egg, sherry, lemon. 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.

You might also like

Lemon WheyLemon Whey33 recipesLemon WineLemon Wine31 recipesLemon SquashLemon Squash10 recipesLemon EssenceLemon Essence8 recipes