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Game Soup

A soup made from game bird meat, bones, turnips, cream, and egg yolks.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Meat and turnip work together. They rank in the top 21% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 930 recipes. Both carry 2-methylbutyraldehyde, which smells malty, chocolate. The science ↓

Game Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the meat and broth

  1. Remove the meat from the breasts of cold birds and pound it in a mortar.

  2. Break the legs and bones, then boil them in broth for 1 hour.

  3. Strain the broth and add it gradually to the tamis to help strain everything.

Make the soup

  1. Boil 6 turnips, mash them, and strain through a fine cloth with the pounded meat.

  2. Place the soup kettle near the fire without boiling.

  3. Mix 6 egg yolks with ½ pint of cream and strain through a sieve.

  4. As the broth heats, stir in the egg mixture with a wooden spoon, ensuring it does not boil to prevent curdling.

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. Meat + turniptop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together930 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyraldehyde (malty, chocolate).

  2. Meat + eggtop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,432 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  3. Meat + creamtop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,248 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  4. Cream + eggtop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together42,166 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  5. Turnip + creamtop 27% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together797 recipes

    Shared aroma: octanal (fat, soap).

Cream and egg barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 42,166 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

Cold bird meat
Provides the main body and flavour of the soup once pounded and strained.
Turnips
Mashed and strained in, they thicken the soup and give it body.
Egg yolks
Enrich and thicken the soup as they gently set with the heat.
Cream
Adds richness and a smooth, silky mouthfeel to the soup.

The step that matters

Stirring in the egg and cream mixture. Egg yolks set when heated, so if the soup boils the proteins curdle and the texture turns grainy. Keep the heat low and stir steadily while the mixture is added.

Swap the turnip

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

  1. Asparagusfits better
  2. Spinachfits better
  3. Potatofits better
  4. Turnipthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, cream, egg. 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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