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A Good Game Soup

A soup made from game bird legs, bones, leftover breast meat, turnips, egg yolks, and cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Meat and turnip work together. They rank in the top 21% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 930 recipes. Both carry 2-methylbutyraldehyde, which smells malty, chocolate. The science ↓

A Good Game Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the broth

  1. Break up the legs and bones.

  2. Boil them in broth for 1 hour.

Prepare the purée

  1. Boil the turnips until tender.

  2. Mash them finely.

  3. Pound the meat finely.

  4. Pass it through a fine sieve.

  5. Gradually add the broth through the sieve into the mixture.

Finish the soup

  1. Heat the combined mixture in a soup kettle without boiling.

  2. Mix the egg yolks with the cream.

  3. Stir the mixture into the soup.

  4. Remove the soup just as it comes to a boil to prevent curdling.

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. Meat + turniptop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together930 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyraldehyde (malty, chocolate).

  2. Meat + eggtop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,432 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  3. Meat + creamtop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,248 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  4. Egg + creamtop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together42,166 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  5. Turnip + creamtop 27% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together797 recipes

    Shared aroma: octanal (fat, soap).

Egg and cream barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 42,166 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

Egg yolks
Thicken the soup and add richness as they set gently with heat.
Cream
Adds richness and a smooth, silky texture to the soup.
Turnips
Become soft when boiled and mashed, giving the soup body and mild sweetness.
Leftover meat from bird breasts
Pounded and sieved, it adds savory flavor and body to the soup.

The step that matters

Remove the soup just as it comes to a boil. Egg yolks thicken through gentle heat. If the mixture boils, the proteins in the yolks tighten and curdle, leaving the soup grainy instead of smooth.

Swap the turnip

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (meat, egg, cream):

  1. Asparagusfits better
  2. Spinachfits better
  3. Potatofits better
  4. Turnipthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, egg, cream. 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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