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Boast Venison Soup

A hearty soup made from a venison bone, water, carrots, onions, spices, butter, flour, and red wine, served over toasted bread.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
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Why it works: Pepper and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,451 recipes. Both carry ethyl octanoate, which smells fruity, wine. The science ↓

Boast Venison Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the soup

  1. Break up the bone and place it in a soup pot with 4 quarts of water, carrots, onions, pepper, salt, and cloves.

  2. Boil for 3 hours, then strain the mixture.

  3. In a separate bowl, mix the butter with the flour until smooth, then stir the butter-flour mixture into the soup.

  4. Bring the soup to a boil again, then add the red wine.

Serve

  1. Cut the toasted bread into dice and place the diced bread in the bottom of a tureen.

  2. Pour the soup over the toasted bread.

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 + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  2. Carrot + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,873 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  3. Carrot + peppertop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,555 recipes

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

  4. Carrot + oniontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

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

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Adds richness and fat, and with the flour helps thicken the soup.
Flour
Thickens the soup into a smoother, heavier body when mixed with butter.
Red wine
Adds acidity and depth of flavour to the soup.
Carrots
Add sweetness and body to the broth as it simmers.
Onions
Add savoury sweetness and aroma to the broth as it simmers.

The step that matters

Stirring the butter-flour mixture into the soup. Flour lumps form if it is added raw or unevenly; mixing it smooth with butter first lets it disperse and thicken the soup evenly.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (carrot, pepper, clove, butter, flour, red wine, bread):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Parsnipfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against carrot, pepper, clove, butter, flour, red wine, bread. 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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