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Partridge and Pheasant Soup

A hearty soup made with partridge, pheasant, ham, beef, celery, onions, and bread.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Beef and onion are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,092 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Partridge and Pheasant Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Skin the birds and cut them into pieces.

  2. Slice the ham, celery, and onions.

Make the soup

  1. Fry all ingredients in butter until browned, being careful not to burn them.

  2. Transfer to a stewpan, add boiling water, peppercorns, and salt.

  3. Stew gently for 2 hours, then strain through a sieve.

  4. Return the liquid to the stewpan, add stewed celery and fried bread.

  5. When near boiling, skim the surface, pour into a tureen, and serve hot.

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. Beef + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,092 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  2. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  3. Celery + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,518 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Ham + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,536 recipes

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

  5. Pheasant + beeftop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together131 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Partridge
Gives the soup its main poultry flavour as the birds stew slowly.
Pheasant
Adds rich, savoury depth to the broth as it stews for two hours.
Gravy beef
Releases gelatin and savoury flavour into the broth during long, gentle stewing.
Butter
Browning the ingredients in butter builds roasted, savoury flavour before stewing.

The step that matters

Frying until browned without burning. Browning develops deep, savoury flavours through the Maillard reaction, but burnt pieces turn bitter and taint the whole broth.

Swap the celery

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pheasant, ham, beef, onion, butter, bread):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against pheasant, ham, beef, onion, butter, bread. 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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