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Game Soup

Game Soup is a stew of finely chopped partridges or pheasants with turnips, onion, and a creamy egg yolk mixture.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Turnip and onion match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,585 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Game Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the meat and gravy

  1. Chop the game meat finely.

  2. Pound the chopped meat with a bit of butter.

  3. Break the bones.

  4. Stew the bones in broth to make gravy.

  5. Boil the turnips and onion in the gravy until thoroughly cooked.

  6. Squeeze the cooked mixture through a fine sieve into the pounded meat.

Season and combine

  1. Season the mixture with cayenne, nutmeg, and coarse sea salt.

  2. Gradually add the gravy to the seasoned mixture.

Finish and thicken

  1. Place the mixture in a stew pan on low heat, avoiding boiling.

  2. Beat the egg yolks with the cream until well combined.

  3. Stir in the egg and cream mixture as the soup is about to boil.

  4. Allow the soup to thicken without boiling.

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. Turnip + oniontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

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

  3. Turnip + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together377 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  5. Turnip + peppertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,252 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Egg yolks
Thicken the soup and give it a smooth, rich body when gently heated.
Cream
Adds richness and a silky texture that softens the soup's flavour.
Turnips
Cook down to add body and a mild sweetness to the soup.
Game meat
Provides the main savoury flavour and body of the soup.

The step that matters

Stir in the egg and cream mixture as the soup is about to boil. Egg yolks thicken through gentle heat; if the soup boils after they are added, they can scramble and curdle, leaving a grainy texture instead of a smooth, thickened soup.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pheasant, butter, turnip, pepper, nutmeg, egg, cream):

  1. Leekfits better
  2. Spinachfits better
  3. Shallotfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pheasant, butter, turnip, pepper, nutmeg, egg, cream. 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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