Skip to main content
Main

Game Soup

A hearty soup made with prairie hens, lean beef, and vegetables simmered for hours.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Carrot and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,053 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Game Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the birds

  1. Boil the prairie hens until about one-third done.

  2. Put the hens into a soup kettle with the beef, salt, and water.

Simmer the soup

  1. Set on a slow fire and skim as needed.

  2. Add the carrot, parsley, celery, onion, bay leaf, and peppercorns.

  3. Simmer for three hours.

  4. Remove the birds from the kettle.

  5. Simmer the broth for an additional two hours.

Strain and serve

  1. Strain the soup 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. Carrot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

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

  2. Carrot + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  3. Parsley + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,810 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Beef + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,092 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Prairie hens
Provide the main meat and flavour that enriches the broth as they cook.
Lean beef
Adds meaty depth and body to the broth during long simmering.
Onion
Contributes savoury sweetness and aroma to the broth as it simmers.
Carrot
Adds subtle sweetness and aroma to the broth.

The step that matters

Skim as needed during the slow simmer. Impurities and fat rise to the surface as the liquid heats. Removing them keeps the broth clear and clean-tasting, and it matters most early in the simmer before the flavours settle.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, carrot, parsley, celery):

  1. Parsnipfits better
  2. Turnipfits better
  3. Leekfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, carrot, parsley, celery. 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.

You might also like

Roast BeefRoast Beef211 recipesBeef LoafBeef Loaf175 recipesCarrot SoupCarrot Soup134 recipesCream of Celery SoupCream of Celery Soup113 recipes