Skip to main content
Main

Soupe De Gibier. — Game Soup.

A hearty soup made with beef, game birds, veal knuckle, carrots, celery, cloves, fennel, and water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

Soupe De Gibier. — Game Soup.

Ingredients

Directions

Make the stock

  1. Combine the beef, partridges, pheasant, veal knuckle, carrots, celery, cloves, fennel, and water in a soup pot.

  2. Bring the mixture to a boil and skim the surface carefully.

  3. Simmer the soup for 4 hours.

Prepare the thickening

  1. Pound the meat from the cold partridges with the soaked French roll crumbs.

  2. Mix the pounded meat with enough broth to pass through a coarse sieve.

Finish and serve

  1. Strain the soup into the mixture.

  2. Add salt to taste.

  3. Serve the soup without boiling.

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 + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Carrot + fenneltop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together330 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  3. Celery + fenneltop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together276 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  4. Clove + fenneltop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together350 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

What each ingredient does

Gravy beef
Releases gelatin and savory flavor into the stock during long simmering.
Veal knuckle
Adds collagen that gives the stock body and a silky mouthfeel.
French roll crumbs
Soaked bread binds the pounded meat so it can be strained into a smooth purée.
Partridges
Provide rich gamey flavor to the stock and the pounded meat.

The step that matters

Serve the soup without boiling. Boiling after the meat has been added can cloud the broth and toughen the pounded meat, so the soup should be kept hot but below a boil.

Swap the fennel

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, pheasant, veal, carrot, celery, clove, meat):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, pheasant, veal, carrot, celery, clove, meat. 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.

You might also like

Beef, Mutton, or Veal BrothBeef, Mutton, or Veal Broth6 recipesRoast BeefRoast Beef211 recipesBeef LoafBeef Loaf175 recipesCarrot SoupCarrot Soup134 recipes