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Pheasant or Chicken Soup

A savory soup made from pheasant or chicken, broth, butter, breadcrumbs, spices, shallots, egg yolks, and formed into small balls.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Mace and nutmeg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,557 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Pheasant or Chicken Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the pheasants

  1. Roast the pheasants until half cooked.

  2. Flour the roasted pheasants thickly.

  3. Remove the flesh from the cooled pheasant breasts and set aside, covering to keep fresh.

  4. Cut the remaining parts of the birds into joints.

  5. Bruise the bodies.

Make the soup

  1. Stew everything in the beef broth for 2 to 3 hours.

  2. Strain the soup.

  3. Press as much liquid as possible from the pheasants.

  4. Let the soup cool.

  5. Skim the fat from the soup.

Make the forcemeat balls

  1. Remove the skin from the breast meat, mince it, and pound it into a fine paste with the butter and bread crumbs.

  2. Season the mixture with cayenne, salt, mace, and nutmeg.

  3. Add the minced shallots, boiled in a little soup, and mix well.

  4. Moisten the mixture with the egg yolks.

  5. Roll the mixture into small balls, dusting them with flour.

Finish and serve

  1. Heat the soup in a clean pot.

  2. When boiling, add the balls and poach for 10 to 12 minutes.

  3. Ensure the soup is well-seasoned with salt and cayenne before serving.

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. Mace + nutmegtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Nutmeg + shallottop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,019 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  4. Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

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

  5. Pheasant + beeftop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together131 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Pheasants
Provide the main meat and flavor for the soup and the breast meat for the balls.
Beef broth
Forms the liquid base that carries the flavor of the birds.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, moist texture to the pounded breast mixture.
Bread crumbs
Absorb moisture and bind the pounded meat into a mixture that holds its shape.
Egg yolks
Bind the mixture and add richness so the balls hold together when poached.
Shallots
Add a mild aromatic sweetness to the forcemeat mixture.

The step that matters

Poach the balls gently after the soup boils. Adding the balls to a rolling boil can break them apart. Egg yolks set with heat, so a steady simmer keeps the balls firm and tender while they cook through.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pheasant, beef, butter, bread, pepper, nutmeg, shallot):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against pheasant, beef, butter, bread, pepper, nutmeg, shallot. 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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