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Grouse Soup a I,a Montagnarde

A soup made from roasted grouse, sherry, vegetables, and stock, finished with a puree of grouse meat and rice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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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 ↓

Grouse Soup a I,a Montagnarde

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the grouse

  1. Roast the grouse.

  2. Remove the meat from the bones, discarding the lower backs.

  3. Set aside 4 fillets and cut them into small pieces.

Make the stock

  1. In a stewpan, combine the carcasses, sherry, carrot, onion, celery, cloves, shallots, and mace.

  2. Simmer gently for 10 minutes.

  3. Add the stock and boil for 1.5 hours.

  4. Strain the mixture into a basin.

Make the puree and serve

  1. Pound the remaining grouse meat with a little boiled rice and moisten with the grouse essence.

  2. Pass the mixture through a tammy to create a puree and place it in a small soup pot.

  3. Warm the puree gently before serving to prevent curdling.

  4. Pour the puree into a soup tureen with the reserved grouse fillet pieces and small quenelles.

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

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  3. Clove + shallottop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,677 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Carrot + oniontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  5. Celery + clovetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,668 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-decalactone (peach, creamy).

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

What each ingredient does

Grouse
Provides the main meaty flavour of the soup and the meat for the puree and fillet garnish.
Sherry
Adds acidity and aromatic depth to the stock built from the carcasses.
Boiled rice
Starch that thickens the pounded meat so the puree holds body.
Stock
Forms the liquid base, giving the soup its savoury body.

The step that matters

Warm the puree gently. Strong heat can cause a smooth puree to curdle or separate, so it should be warmed slowly and never brought to a hard boil before serving.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sherry, carrot, onion, celery, clove, shallot, rice):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sherry, carrot, onion, celery, clove, shallot, rice. 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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