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Game Soup

Soup made from cold game bird meat, turnips, egg yolks, cream, butter, and broth.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Cream and butter 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 ↓

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. Boil the pounded meat, legs, and bones in broth for 1 hour.

Make the soup base

  1. Boil and mash the turnips, then strain them through a tammy with the pounded meat.

  2. Strain the broth and add it gradually to the tammy to extract all liquid.

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

Finish with the liaison

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

  2. Heat the soup, and as it approaches boiling, stir in the egg mixture gently to avoid 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. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  2. Meat + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,594 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

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

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

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

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 savoury flavour of the soup once pounded and strained.
Turnips
Boiled and mashed, they thicken the soup and add body and mild sweetness.
Egg yolks
Thicken the soup gently when heated and give it a smooth, rich texture.
Cream
Adds richness and fat, giving the soup a silky mouthfeel.
Broth
Serves as the cooking liquid that carries flavour through the soup.

The step that matters

Adding the egg mixture. Egg yolks set when they get hot, so if the soup boils after they are stirred in, they can curdle and turn grainy. Stirring gently while the soup is just below boiling lets them thicken it smoothly.

Swap the turnip

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

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

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