Why it works: Carrot and celery match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,173 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓
Game Soup
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare the stock
Break the bones.
Cut the game remains into small pieces.
Put the pieces into a stew-pan.
Pour the stock over the pieces.
Add the diced carrot, onion, turnip, and celery.
Bring the soup to a boil.
Skim the soup carefully.
Reduce the heat.
Let the soup simmer gently for 2 hours.
Strain the soup.
Skim off the fat.
Prepare the barley
Wash the barley.
Boil the barley in a separate saucepan until done.
Drain the barley.
Set aside half of the barley.
Pound the remaining barley with the yolks of the hard-boiled eggs.
Rub the mixture through a fine sieve.
Moisten the mixture with the cream.
Finish and serve
Gradually add the mixture to the soup.
Stir the soup over the heat until very hot, but do not allow it to boil.
Add the remaining barley.
Serve immediately.
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.
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Carrot + celerytop 1% of all pairsSmell alikestrongCooked together10,173 recipes
Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).
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Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairsSmell alikestrongCooked together8,002 recipes
Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
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Turnip + barleytop 2% of all pairsSmell alikestrongCooked together629 recipes
Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
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Turnip + celerytop 2% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together4,418 recipes
Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
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Onion + turniptop 5% of all pairsSmell alikestrongCooked together7,585 recipes
Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Game bones and trimmings
- Release savory flavor and gelatin into the stock, giving the soup body and depth.
- Barley
- Thickens the soup and adds a starchy, hearty texture when pureed and returned to the pot.
- Hard-boiled egg yolks
- Enrich the puree with richness and help it bind smoothly into the soup.
- Cream
- Adds fat and smoothness, softening the flavor and rounding out the texture.
- Onion
- Contributes aromatic sweetness and depth to the stock as it simmers.
- Carrot
- Adds subtle sweetness and color to the stock.
The step that matters
Stir the soup over the heat without boiling. Once the cream and egg-barley mixture is added, boiling can cause the dairy to curdle and separate, leaving the soup grainy and thin in texture.
Swap the onion
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (carrot, turnip, celery, barley, cream, egg):
- Leekfits better
- Parsnipfits better
- Spinachfits better
- Onionthe original
Fit is the average pairing score against carrot, turnip, celery, barley, cream, egg. 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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