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Pheasant Soup

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

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 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. In a stew-pan, melt the butter and add the diced ham. Cook until browned.

  2. Add the sliced carrot, celery, herbs, and onion or shallots. Sauté until softened.

  3. Add the remains of the cooked pheasant and the semi-roasted bird, then pour in the stock.

Simmer and strain

  1. Bring to a boil, skim off any foam, and simmer gently for about an hour.

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

Finish and serve

  1. Cut the breast and wing meat into small slices and add to the soup.

  2. Stir in the sherry, season with salt and cayenne, and reheat before serving.

  3. For a thicker soup, add roux before serving.

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

Pheasant
Provides the main meat and the rich flavour of the soup.
Stock
Forms the liquid base and carries the flavour of the meat and vegetables.
Ham
Adds savoury depth through browning in the butter at the start.
Butter
Carries flavour and helps the ham and vegetables brown and soften.
Sherry
Adds acidity and aroma that brighten the finished soup.
Roux
Thickens the soup to a fuller body when added.

The step that matters

Skim off the foam before simmering. Foam rising during the boil carries impurities and cloudiness that would dull the broth. Skimming keeps the soup clear and clean-tasting, and a gentle simmer avoids breaking up the meat.

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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