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Squirrel Soup

A hearty soup made from squirrel meat, vegetables, and thickened with butter and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Celery and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,810 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Squirrel Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the broth

  1. Wash and quarter the squirrels.

  2. Place them in a pot with salt and cold water.

  3. Cover and simmer gently on the back of the stove.

  4. Add vegetables like corn, potatoes, tomatoes, and Lima beans.

  5. Strain the soup when the meat is tender to remove bones.

Thicken and serve

  1. Return the soup to the pot and thicken with butter and flour.

  2. Add chopped celery and parsley if desired.

  3. Toast the bread, cut into dice, and fry in butter.

  4. Place the fried bread in a tureen and pour the hot soup over it.

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 + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,810 recipes

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

  2. Corn + lima beanstop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together222 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).

  3. Tomato + celerytop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,377 recipes

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

  4. Potato + parsleytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,855 recipes

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

  5. Corn + potatotop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together938 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Squirrels
Provide the meat that becomes tender during the long, gentle simmer.
Butter and flour
Together they form a roux that thickens the broth and gives it body.
Vegetables
Add body, sweetness and flavour to the broth as they cook down.
Bread
Fried dice soak up the hot broth and add crisp-to-soft contrast in texture.

The step that matters

Thicken with butter and flour. Flour must be cooked in fat before or as it is added to the hot broth, or it forms lumps and tastes raw. Stir steadily so the thickener disperses evenly and the soup turns smooth rather than pasty.

Swap the lima beans

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (corn, potato, tomato, butter, flour, celery, parsley):

  1. Beansfits better
  2. Chickpeafits better
  3. Lentilsfits better
  4. Lima beansthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against corn, potato, tomato, butter, flour, celery, parsley. 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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