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Game Soup

A soup made from cold game breast meat, turnips, egg yolks, cream, and broth.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Egg and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 24% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 42,166 recipes. Both carry acetic acid, which smells sour, vinegar. The science ↓

Game Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the meat and broth

  1. Pound the cold bird breasts in a mortar.

  2. Break the legs and bones into pieces and boil them in broth for 1 hour.

  3. Strain the broth and place it in a soup kettle over low heat, avoiding boiling.

Make the soup

  1. Mash the turnips and strain them through a fine sieve with the pounded meat.

  2. Mix the egg yolks with the cream and strain through a sieve.

  3. As the soup is about to boil, add the egg and cream mixture, stirring gently to combine.

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. Egg + creamtop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together42,166 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

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

    Shared aroma: octanal (fat, soap).

  3. Turnip + eggtop 36% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,077 recipes

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

Egg and cream 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

Bird breasts
Provide the main meat, pounded to a smooth base that thickens the soup.
Turnips
Mashed and strained to give body and a mild, earthy sweetness to the soup.
Egg yolks
Enrich and thicken the soup as they gently set when combined with the hot liquid.
Cream
Adds richness and a smooth, silky texture that softens the soup's flavour.

The step that matters

Adding the egg and cream mixture. Egg yolks set when heated, so the soup must be just below boiling and stirred gently when they are added. Boiling can curdle the yolks and leave the soup grainy.

Swap the turnip

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against 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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