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Game Soup

A hearty soup made with game, calf's foot, ham, carrots, onion, mace, herbs, water, egg white, sherry, lemon, and hard-boiled egg.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and onion are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 21,601 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Game Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the stock

  1. Combine game, calf's foot, ham, carrots, onion, mace, and herbs in a pot.

  2. Add 2 quarts of water and cook gently for 3 hours.

  3. Strain the soup.

Clarify and finish

  1. Clarify the strained soup with egg white.

  2. Stir in sherry, lemon slices, hard-boiled egg slices, and season with pepper and salt.

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

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

  2. Carrot + lemontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,351 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  3. Rabbit + oniontop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,292 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Rabbit + hamtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together273 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Ham + sherrytop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together377 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-ethyl-2-methoxyphenol (smoky, clove).

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

What each ingredient does

Calf's foot
Adds gelatin, giving the finished soup body and a silky mouthfeel.
Egg white
Coagulates during clarifying, trapping cloudy particles so the broth becomes clear.
Sherry
Adds acidity and aromatic depth that brightens the rich meat broth.
Ham
Contributes savory, salty flavor to the stock as it simmers.
Game
Provides the main meaty flavor base of the broth as it cooks slowly.

The step that matters

Clarify the strained soup with egg white. Egg white must be whisked into cold or warm broth and then gently heated without boiling hard; vigorous boiling breaks up the coagulated raft, leaving the soup cloudy.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (rabbit, ham, carrot, onion, egg, sherry, lemon):

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Celeryfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against rabbit, ham, carrot, onion, egg, sherry, lemon. 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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