Skip to main content
Main

Pheasant Soup

A pheasant soup with meatballs made from roasted pheasant, butter, bread crumbs, spices, and egg yolks.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓
Pheasant Soup

Why it works: Mace and nutmeg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,557 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Pheasant Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the pheasants

  1. Roast the pheasants until half cooked, then flour them.

  2. Remove the flesh from the breasts and set aside, covering it to keep it fresh.

  3. Cut the remaining parts of the pheasants into joints and bruise the bodies.

  4. Stew the pheasants in the beef broth for 2 to 3 hours.

  5. Strain the soup and press out as much liquid as possible from the pheasants.

  6. Let the soup cool, then remove the skin from the breasts and mince the flesh.

Make the balls

  1. Pound the minced pheasant with butter and bread crumbs until smooth.

  2. Season the mixture with cayenne, salt, mace, nutmeg, and minced shallots.

  3. Moisten the mixture with egg yolks and roll into small balls.

  4. Dust the balls with flour.

Finish the soup

  1. Skim the fat from the soup and heat it in a clean pot until boiling.

  2. Poach the balls in the boiling soup for 10 to 12 minutes, ensuring the soup is well seasoned.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Mace + nutmegtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Nutmeg + shallottop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,019 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

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

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

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

  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

Pheasants
Provide the main meat for the soup and the minced flesh for the balls.
Beef broth
Forms the liquid base that carries the flavour of the stewed birds.
Butter
Adds richness and moisture to the minced meat mixture.
Dry bread crumbs
Absorb moisture and help bind the minced meat into a soft mixture.
Egg yolks
Bind the mixture and add richness so the balls hold their shape.
Shallots
Add a mild aromatic sweetness to the seasoned meat mixture.

The step that matters

Poach the balls in gently boiling soup. Egg yolks set when heated, so the balls can crumble or turn rubbery if the soup boils too hard. Holding the poaching time to 10 to 12 minutes keeps them tender and intact while they cook through.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pheasant, beef, butter, bread, pepper, nutmeg, shallot):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Capersfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pheasant, beef, butter, bread, pepper, nutmeg, shallot. 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.

You might also like

Brown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesRoast BeefRoast Beef211 recipesBeef LoafBeef Loaf175 recipesCorned BeefCorned Beef87 recipes