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Game Soup

A hearty soup made with game meat, liver, blood, and mushroom ketchup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Mushroom and port wine work together. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 570 recipes. Both carry guaiacol, which smells smoky, sweet. The science ↓

Game Soup

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the stock

  1. Combine mushroom ketchup, ham or bacon, pepper, and salt in a pot.

  2. Slowly bring the mixture to a boil.

  3. Skim the surface clean.

  4. Cover and simmer for 4 to 5 hours, or place in an oven at 300°F for the same time.

  5. Remove all pieces of game.

  6. Strain the soup through a sieve into a stew pan.

  7. Cut the meat into bite‑sized pieces.

  8. Add the meat back to the strained soup.

  9. Pour boiling water over the bones to make up to 4 quarts of liquid.

  10. Simmer for a few minutes without boiling.

  11. Strain this liquid into the soup.

  12. Stir well.

  13. Let the soup and meat stew gently together for a few more minutes.

Finish and serve

  1. Parboil the liver to firm it up.

  2. Rub the liver with port wine and the blood.

  3. Remove the soup from the heat.

  4. Stir in the liver mixture.

  5. Serve immediately in a tureen.

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. Mushroom + port winetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together570 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  2. Mushroom + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,580 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  3. Liver + port winetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together108 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  4. Ketchup + port winetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together425 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Mushroom + hamtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,486 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

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

What each ingredient does

Liver
Firmed by parboiling, then enriches the soup with a rich, savoury depth.
Blood
Thickens the soup and adds body and richness when stirred in.
Port wine
Adds sweetness and aroma to the liver mixture before it joins the soup.
Mushroom ketchup
Contributes concentrated savoury, umami flavour to the stock.

The step that matters

Stir in the liver mixture off the heat. Blood thickens and can curdle if it boils, so the soup should be removed from the heat before the liver and blood mixture is added and stirred in gently.

“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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