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Pheasant Soup

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

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 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

Prepare the base

  1. Melt butter in a stew-pan.

  2. Add diced ham and fry until browned.

  3. Add sliced carrot, celery, herbs, and onion or shallots. Cook until softened.

  4. Add the remains of the cooked pheasant and the semi-roasted bird, excluding the breast and best parts of the wings.

Simmer the soup

  1. Pour stock into the pot. Bring to a boil.

  2. Skim the surface. Reduce heat.

  3. Cook gently for about an hour.

  4. Strain the soup through a sieve, keeping back the vegetables.

  5. Rub the meat through the sieve and return it to the soup.

Finish and serve

  1. Cut the breast and wing meat into small slices and add to the soup along with the sherry, salt, and cayenne.

  2. Reheat the soup.

  3. 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
Melts to enrich the base and carry flavour from the aromatics.
Lean raw ham
Browning in the fat adds savoury depth to the soup.
Stock
Forms the liquid body of the soup and carries the flavour of the bird.
Cooked pheasant
Its meat and bones give the soup its main flavour and body.
Sherry
Adds a sharp, aromatic note that rounds out the finished soup.

The step that matters

Skim the surface after bringing to a boil. Foam and fat rising during the first boil can cloud the broth and taste greasy. Skimming before reducing the heat keeps the soup clear and clean-tasting.

Swap the onion

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

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

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