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Partridge Soup

A hearty soup made with partridges, pheasants, veal, ham, vegetables, and eggs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 16 ingredients
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Why it works: Celery and carrot 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 ↓

Partridge Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the meat

  1. Cut the partridges, fowl, veal, and ham into pieces.

  2. Place them in a stewpot with water.

  3. Cover and steam until three-quarters cooked.

  4. Add beef stock.

  5. Simmer until all ingredients are tender.

Clarify the stock

  1. Strain the liquid through a fine sieve.

  2. Let it cool.

  3. Remove the fat from the cooled liquid.

  4. Add liquid color, salt, and cayenne pepper.

  5. Whisk in the eggs and their shells.

  6. Heat over a good fire.

  7. Strain through a tamis cloth.

Finish and serve

  1. Slice the cabbage.

  2. Scald the cabbage.

  3. Add it to the soup.

  4. Boil gently until the cabbage is tender.

  5. Serve one of the birds in the soup.

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. Celery + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Turnip + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Celery + turniptop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Onion + turniptop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Onion + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Their whites bind to impurities and draw them up, clarifying the soup as they set.
Partridges or pheasants
Provide the main poultry flavour that the stock is built on.
Old fowl
Adds deep, rich flavour and body to the stock during long simmering.
Knuckle of veal
Contributes gelatin, giving the finished soup body and a silky mouthfeel.
White cabbage
Adds a mild vegetable flavour and tender texture to the finished soup.

The step that matters

Whisking in the eggs and clarifying the stock. The eggs must be whisked in before heating so their proteins can coagulate and trap cloudy particles; heating too early or too hard can scramble them, leaving the soup murky.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pheasant, veal, ham, celery, onion, turnip, carrot):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against pheasant, veal, ham, celery, onion, turnip, carrot. 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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