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Menu Fob a Dinner of Six

A soup made with snipe meat, bones, marsala, red currant jelly, lime juice, and egg yolk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Menu Fob a Dinner of Six

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the meat

  1. Cool the bones in a bowl.

  2. Pass the saved snipe meat through a mincing machine and pound it to a paste, using some soup to help.

Make the soup

  1. Skim any fat from the soup and place it in a saucepan over heat.

  2. Add butter to the saucepan and stir in flour to make a smooth paste.

  3. Gradually add the soup and snipe paste, stirring continuously until it boils and thickens.

  4. Add marsala, red currant jelly, and lime juice.

Finish and serve

  1. In a cup, mix a raw egg yolk with a little soup and strain it into a tureen.

  2. Pour the soup over the strained egg and serve.

  3. Optionally, stir in boiling cream for extra richness.

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. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  2. Red currant + limetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together59 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  3. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + limetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,381 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Enriches the base and carries flavour through the roux.
Flour
Thickens the soup by forming a roux with the butter.
Snipe meat
Gives the soup its main meaty body once pounded to a paste.
Raw egg
Adds richness and body to the finished soup when stirred in gently.
Marsala
Adds wine-based depth and a sweet, fortified aroma.
Red currant jelly
Adds sweetness and a fruity note that balances the savoury soup.

The step that matters

Adding the egg. Egg yolk can curdle if it meets very hot liquid directly. Mixing it first with a little soup, then straining it into the tureen, tempers it so it thickens smoothly without scrambling.

Swap the lime

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, flour, meat, red currant, egg, cream):

  1. Raspberryfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Raisinfits better
  4. Limethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, meat, red currant, egg, cream. 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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