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Partridge Soup

A hearty soup made with partridges, pheasants, ham, celery, turnips, onions, carrot, mace, garlic, water, veal broth, seasonings, and thickened with flour and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 ingredients
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Why it works: Celery and carrot 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 ↓

Partridge Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the partridges, fowl, and ham into pieces.

  2. Peel and wash the celery, turnips, onions, and carrot.

Make the broth

  1. Place the game and vegetables in a pot with 1 quart of water and cover it tightly.

  2. Steam until nearly done.

  3. Add 3 quarts of veal broth and simmer for 15 minutes.

  4. Strain the soup.

  5. Let the soup cool.

  6. Remove the fat.

Clear and finish

  1. Clear the soup with a beaten yolk and white of an egg.

  2. Bring the soup to a boil.

  3. Pass the soup through a fine cloth.

  4. Season with a few drops of odouring liquid, Cayenne pepper, and salt.

  5. Boil again.

  6. Add some of the game pieces.

  7. If desired, thicken with a mixture of flour and butter.

  8. 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. Celery + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Turnip + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Celery + turniptop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  5. Turnip + oniontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked 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

Partridges or pheasants
Provide the main meat flavour and body of the soup.
Old fowl
Adds rich, gelatinous body and depth of flavour to the broth.
Veal broth
Forms the liquid base of the soup and carries its flavour.
Egg white and yolk (in the method)
Bind fine particles that cloud the broth, so the clearing step leaves it transparent.
Flour and butter
Thicken the soup when used, as a roux-style binder.

The step that matters

Clear the soup with egg white and yolk. The egg proteins coagulate and trap suspended particles as they set. Boiling too hard or stirring after adding the egg breaks up the raft, leaving the soup cloudy.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pheasant, ham, celery, turnip, onion, carrot, clove):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against pheasant, ham, celery, turnip, onion, carrot, clove. 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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