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Venison Soup

A hearty soup made with venison, veal shank or fowl, onions, ham, Madeira wine, and thickened with butter and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Venison Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the broth

  1. In a large pot, boil 5 quarts of water with 2 pounds of veal shank or 1 fowl, and 5 pounds of small cut venison breast.

  2. Add 2 or 3 chopped onions, whole white pepper, coarse sea salt, and ¼ pound of lean ham.

  3. Let it stew until fully boiled down, extracting all the strength.

  4. Rub the mixture through a sieve.

Thicken and finish

  1. Thicken the soup with a little butter kneaded into flour.

  2. Add 1 pint of Madeira wine and boil for 20 to 30 minutes.

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. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Venison + hamtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

  3. Onion + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Veal + hamtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,264 recipes

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

  5. Venison + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together957 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Venison breast
Provides the main meat flavour and body to the broth as it cooks down.
Veal shank or fowl
Adds gelatin and savoury depth to the stock, giving it richness and body.
Onions
Contribute sweetness and aroma as they soften and release their flavour into the broth.
Butter and flour
Form a roux-style paste that thickens the soup and adds a smooth, rich mouthfeel.
Madeira wine
Adds sweetness, acidity and aromatic depth, rounding out the finished soup.

The step that matters

Thickening with butter and flour. Flour must be cooked into the butter and added to hot liquid in small amounts while stirring, otherwise it clumps and the soup stays lumpy and floury-tasting.

Swap the white pepper

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (veal, venison, onion, ham, butter, flour, madeira wine):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Capersfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, venison, onion, ham, butter, flour, madeira wine. 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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