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Game Soup

A soup made with cold game meat, turnips, egg yolks, cream, and bone broth.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Meat and turnip work together. They rank in the top 21% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 930 recipes. Both carry 2-methylbutyraldehyde, which smells malty, chocolate. The science ↓

Game Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the meat and broth

  1. Remove the meat from the breasts of cold birds and pound it in a mortar.

  2. Boil the legs and bones in broth for 1 hour.

Make the soup base

  1. Boil and mash the turnips, then strain them through a cloth with the pounded meat.

  2. Strain the broth and add it gradually to the tamis to help strain everything.

  3. Place the soup kettle near the fire without boiling.

Finish with the egg mixture

  1. Mix the egg yolks with the cream and strain through a sieve.

  2. As the broth heats, stir in the egg mixture with a wooden spoon, ensuring it does not boil to prevent curdling.

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. Meat + turniptop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together930 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyraldehyde (malty, chocolate).

  2. Meat + eggtop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,432 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  3. Meat + creamtop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,248 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  4. Egg + creamtop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together42,166 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  5. Turnip + creamtop 27% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together797 recipes

    Shared aroma: octanal (fat, soap).

Egg and cream barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 42,166 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Cold bird meat
Provides the body and substance of the soup once pounded and strained.
Turnips
Mashed and strained to thicken the soup and give it body.
Egg yolks
Enrich the soup and thicken it gently when heated with the cream.
Cream
Adds richness and a smooth, silky texture to the soup.
Broth
Forms the liquid base of the soup, carrying the flavour of the bones and legs.

The step that matters

Stir in the egg mixture without boiling. Egg yolks thicken by gentle heat, but if the soup boils they scramble and curdle, leaving a grainy texture. Keep the heat low and stir constantly.

Swap the turnip

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (meat, egg, cream):

  1. Asparagusfits better
  2. Spinachfits better
  3. Potatofits better
  4. Turnipthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, 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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