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Consomme of Pheasant

A clear pheasant consommé made by simmering pheasant bones, ham, herbs, and broth, then puréeing cooked pheasant meat with egg yolks.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Leek and celery match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,093 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Consomme of Pheasant

Ingredients

Directions

Make the stock

  1. Remove the skin from the cooked pheasant and chop the meat finely.

  2. Mince the onion, leek, and celery.

  3. Fry the minced vegetables in butter in a stewpan.

  4. Add the pheasant backs, bones, ham, sweet herbs, and broth to the pan.

  5. Bring the mixture to a boil. Skim the surface.

  6. Simmer for 1.5 hours.

  7. Strain the mixture through a cloth. Remove the fat.

Make the custard

  1. In a mortar, pound the chopped pheasant meat.

  2. Mix the pounded meat with the stock, egg yolks, and nutmeg.

  3. Rub the mixture through a sieve.

  4. Pour the sieved mixture into a buttered mold.

  5. Place the mold in a bain-marie.

  6. Poach until thick.

Cool and serve

  1. Let the molded consommé cool.

  2. Turn it out of the mold.

  3. Cut the cooled consommé into squares.

  4. Serve the squares in a soup tureen. Pour the consommé over the squares.

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. Leek + celerytop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,093 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Onion + leektop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,326 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl butyrate (apple, fruity).

  3. Onion + celerytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,518 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Pheasant + leektop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

  5. Meat + hamtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,095 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Cooked pheasant meat
Provides the body and flavor of the set custard once pounded and sieved.
Egg yolks
Coagulate on gentle heating to set the mixture into a firm, sliceable custard.
Broth
Forms the clear, flavorful liquid base that the consommé is built on.
Butter
Softens the minced vegetables when fried, building a rich aromatic base.

The step that matters

Poach until thick. Egg yolks set at gentle heat; if the bain-marie gets too hot, the custard can curdle or turn grainy, so it should be poached slowly and gently.

Swap the celery

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pheasant, meat, onion, leek, butter, ham, egg):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Capersfits better
  3. Garlicfits about as well
  4. Celerythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pheasant, meat, onion, leek, butter, ham, 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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