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Another Pheasant Soup

Soup made from half-roasted pheasants, stock, soaked bread, mushrooms, butter, mace, cayenne, and sea salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Another Pheasant Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the stock

  1. Boil down the half-roasted pheasants in the stock.

  2. Strain the soup.

Prepare the mushroom and pheasant mixture

  1. Add the pounded pheasant breasts mixed with the soaked bread.

  2. In a pan, stew the sliced mushrooms in butter for 10 to 15 minutes without browning.

  3. Add the stewed mushrooms to the mortar.

  4. Pound the mixture with the other ingredients.

Finish and serve

  1. Strain the soup again.

  2. Bring it to a boil.

  3. Serve with fried bread slices.

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. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  2. Mushroom + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

  3. Bread + mushroomtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,536 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  4. Pheasant + mushroomtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together145 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

  5. Pheasant + breadtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together239 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Pheasants
Provide the main meat and rich flavour of the soup stock.
Bread
Soaked in gravy, it thickens the pounded mixture and adds body.
Mushrooms
Stewed in butter, they add earthy flavour and a tender texture.
Butter
Carries the mushrooms' flavour and adds richness during stewing.

The step that matters

Stewing the mushrooms without browning. Stewing gently in butter softens the mushrooms and keeps their flavour mild and pale. Browning would make the soup taste harsher and change its colour.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pheasant, bread, mushroom, butter):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Garlicfits better
  3. Nutmegfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pheasant, bread, mushroom, butter. 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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