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Squirrel Soup

Squirrel Soup is a stew of squirrel meat, ham, onion, mace, and cayenne, thickened with browned flour and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Squirrel Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the stock

  1. Fry the squirrel and onion in the dripping until light brown.

  2. Drain off the fat and place them in a soup pot with the cold water, ham, and mace.

  3. Cover and stew until the meat is tender and the water is reduced by one-third.

  4. Strain the soup, cool it, and skim off the fat.

Finish and serve

  1. Season the soup and return it to the heat.

  2. When it boils, skim again and stir in the butter mixed with browned flour.

  3. Once thickened, add the lemon juice and serve.

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. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Onion + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Mace + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,257 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Squirrel
Provides the main meat and flavour of the soup as it stews tender.
Corned ham
Adds salty, savoury depth to the broth during stewing.
Browned flour
Thickens the soup and gives it a toasted, nutty colour and flavour.
Butter
Enriches the thickened soup, adding richness and a smooth finish.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich broth.

The step that matters

Skimming the fat after straining and again at the boil. Fat left in the soup makes it greasy and can float on the surface, so removing it after cooling and again when it boils keeps the broth clean and smooth before the butter and flour are added.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (ham, onion, pepper, lemon, flour, butter):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against ham, onion, pepper, lemon, flour, butter. 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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