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Pheasant Soup

A savory soup made with pheasant, ham, vegetables, stock, sherry, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Pheasant Soup

Why it works: Carrot and celery match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,173 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Pheasant Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the stock base

  1. In a stew-pan, melt the butter and add the diced ham.

  2. Fry the ham until brown, then add the sliced carrot, celery, herbs, and onion or shallots.

  3. Add the remains of the cooked pheasant and the semi-roasted bird.

  4. Pour in the stock, bring to a boil, skim, and cook gently for about an hour.

Strain and finish

  1. Rub the meat through a sieve and strain the soup over it, discarding the vegetables.

  2. Slice the meat from the breast and wings, add it to the soup along with sherry, salt, and cayenne.

  3. Reheat the soup and serve.

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. Carrot + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Carrot + oniontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Butter + sherrytop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,505 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  5. Ham + sherrytop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together377 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-ethyl-2-methoxyphenol (smoky, clove).

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Fat that softens and browns the ham and vegetables, adding richness to the soup.
Lean raw ham
Browns in the butter to add savoury, roasted flavour to the stock.
Pheasant
Supplies the main meat flavour and body of the soup once simmered and sieved.
Stock
Forms the liquid base that carries the flavour of the meat and vegetables.
Sherry
Adds acidity and a rounded, aromatic finish to the finished soup.

The step that matters

Fry the ham until brown. Browning the ham through the Maillard reaction builds deep savoury flavour that carries into the stock, so it should be coloured rather than pale and steamed.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, ham, carrot, celery, pheasant, sherry):

  1. Leekfits better
  2. Turnipfits better
  3. Capsicumfits about as well
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, ham, carrot, celery, pheasant, sherry. 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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