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Bouillon De Gibier

A broth made from game birds, bacon, water, salt, pepper, nutmeg, served with rice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 13,015 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Bouillon De Gibier

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare and stew

  1. Prepare the game birds as if for roasting.

  2. Place them in a large stewpan.

  3. Add the bacon and 4 to 8 cups of water.

  4. Let it stew for 3 to 4 hours.

Finish the broth and serve

  1. Remove the game birds.

  2. Serve them with some of the sauce.

  3. To the remaining broth, add 5 to 6 cups of hot water, salt, pepper, and nutmeg.

  4. Simmer for 15 minutes.

  5. Serve the soup with rice.

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. Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  2. Nutmeg + ricetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Pepper + ricetop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,379 recipes

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

  4. Quail + ricetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Quail + nutmegtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together53 recipes

    Shared aroma: sabinene (woody, terpenic).

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

What each ingredient does

Game birds
Provide the meat and flavour that the long stew draws into the broth.
Bacon
Adds smoky, savoury fat that enriches the broth as it stews.
Rice
Serves as a starchy accompaniment that soaks up the broth.

The step that matters

Long, gentle stewing of the game birds. Stewing slowly over 3 to 4 hours lets collagen and flavour release into the liquid while keeping the meat tender. A hard boil can toughen the meat and cloud the broth.

Swap the nutmeg

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (quail, pepper, rice):

  1. Turmericfits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Celeryfits about as well
  4. Nutmegthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against quail, pepper, 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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