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Pheasant Soup

A hearty soup made from roasted pheasant, beef broth, butter, breadcrumbs, spices, and egg yolk‑coated meatballs.

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

Why it works: Mace and nutmeg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,557 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Pheasant Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the pheasants

  1. Roast the pheasants until half cooked, then let them cool.

  2. Remove the flesh from the breasts and set it aside, covered, to keep it fresh.

  3. Cut the remaining parts of the birds into joints and bruise the bodies.

  4. Stew the pheasants gently in the beef broth for 2 to 3 hours.

  5. Strain the soup.

  6. Press out as much liquid as possible from the pheasants.

  7. Remove the skin from the breasts.

Make the forcemeat balls

  1. Mince the flesh.

  2. Pound the minced flesh into a fine paste with half the amount of butter and bread crumbs.

  3. Boil minced shallots in a little soup.

  4. Season the mixture with cayenne, salt, mace, nutmeg, and the boiled shallots.

  5. Moisten the mixture with egg yolks.

  6. Roll the mixture into small balls and dust the balls with flour.

Finish the soup

  1. Skim the fat from the soup.

  2. Heat the soup in a clean pot.

  3. Add the balls when the soup is boiling.

  4. Poach the balls for 10 to 12 minutes, ensuring the soup is well-seasoned.

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. Mace + nutmegtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Nutmeg + shallottop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,019 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Pheasant + beeftop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together131 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Pheasants
Provide the main meat and flavour that the broth is built around.
Egg yolks
Bind the minced meat paste so the balls hold their shape while poaching.
Fresh butter
Adds richness and moisture to the meat paste, keeping the balls tender.
Dry bread crumbs
Absorb moisture and lighten the meat paste, giving the balls a softer texture.
Shallots
Add a mild aromatic sweetness to the forcemeat balls.

The step that matters

Poach the balls gently. Once the soup is boiling, the delicate egg-bound balls can break apart if the heat is too fierce. Keeping the soup at a steady simmer while they cook helps them set firm and stay intact.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pheasant, beef, butter, bread, pepper, nutmeg, shallot):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Capersfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pheasant, beef, butter, bread, pepper, nutmeg, shallot. 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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