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Another Pheasant Soup

A soup made from pheasant stock, bread, pheasant breasts, mushrooms, butter, mace, cayenne, and sea salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Another Pheasant Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the stock

  1. Boil down the half-roasted pheasants to make stock.

  2. Strain the stock and reheat it.

Make the pheasant base

  1. Pound the pheasant breasts with the soaked bread until smooth.

  2. In a pan, melt the butter and sauté the mushrooms for 10 to 15 minutes without browning.

  3. Add the sautéed mushrooms to the mortar with the pounded pheasant and mix well.

Finish and serve

  1. Strain the mixture into the soup, bring to a boil, and serve with fried bread slices.

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. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  2. Mushroom + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

  3. Bread + mushroomtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,536 recipes

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

  4. Pheasant + mushroomtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together145 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

  5. Pheasant + breadtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together239 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

Pheasant stock
Forms the liquid base of the soup and carries its flavour.
Pheasant breasts
Provide the meat that is pounded into a smooth body for the soup.
Bread soaked in gravy
Thickens the pounded mixture and adds body to the soup.
Mushrooms
Add earthy flavour and soft texture when sautéed in butter.
Butter
Adds richness and carries flavour when used to sauté the mushrooms.

The step that matters

Sauté the mushrooms without browning. Browning changes the flavour from delicate to toasted and can darken the soup. Cooking gently in butter softens the mushrooms while keeping their light colour and mild taste.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Garlicfits better
  3. Nutmegfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pheasant, bread, mushroom, butter. 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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