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Soup

Game Soup

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

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 ↓

Game Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the broth

  1. Break up the legs and bones and boil them in some broth for 1 hour.

  2. Add the leftover meat from the bird breasts.

Prepare the purée

  1. Boil the turnips until tender, then mash them finely.

  2. Pound the meat until fine and pass it through a fine sieve.

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

Finish the soup

  1. Heat everything together in a soup kettle without boiling.

  2. Mix the egg yolks with the cream and stir into the soup.

  3. 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

Legs and bones of game birds
Simmered in broth to build the savoury base flavour of the soup.
Leftover meat from bird breasts
Pounded and sieved to give the soup its body and fine texture.
Turnips
Mashed to add bulk and a mild sweetness that thickens the soup.
Egg yolks
Enrich and thicken the soup, adding richness and a silky texture.
Cream
Adds fat and richness, softening the flavour and smoothing the texture.

The step that matters

Remove the soup just as it comes to a boil. Egg yolks thicken by gentle heat, and boiling makes the proteins tighten and curdle, leaving the soup grainy.

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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