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Grouse Soup a LA Montagnarde

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

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 LA Montagnarde

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the grouse

  1. Roast the grouse and remove the meat from the bones, discarding the lower backs.

  2. Set aside 4 fillets and cut them into small pieces for later.

Make the stock

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

  2. Simmer gently for 10 minutes.

  3. Add stock and boil for 1.5 hours.

  4. Strain the mixture into a basin.

Make and serve the soup

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

  2. Moisten the puree with grouse essence.

  3. Pass the mixture through a tammy to create a puree.

  4. Warm the puree before serving, ensuring it does not curdle.

  5. Pour the puree into a soup tureen with the reserved grouse fillet pieces.

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 and, pounded, gives the soup its body.
Rice
Boiled and pounded with the meat, it thickens the puree and gives it a smooth texture.
Sherry
Adds acidity and aromatic depth to the stock built from the carcasses and bones.
Stock
Forms the liquid base, carrying flavour from the bones and vegetables into the soup.

The step that matters

Warm the puree before serving, ensuring it does not curdle. Once the puree is hot it can separate or curdle if it boils hard, spoiling its smooth texture. Warming it gently keeps the emulsion of meat, starch and stock stable.

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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