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Grouse Soup a LA Montagnarde

A soup made from roasted grouse, sherry, vegetables, and stock, finished with a grouse meat puree.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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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 ↓

Grouse Soup a LA Montagnarde

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the grouse

  1. Roast the grouse.

  2. Remove the meat from the bones, discarding the lower backs.

  3. Set aside 4 fillets and cut them into small pieces for later.

Make the essence

  1. In a stewpan, combine the carcasses, sherry, carrot, onion, celery, cloves, shallots, and mace.

  2. Simmer gently for 10 minutes.

  3. Add the stock and boil for 1.5 hours.

  4. Strain the mixture into a basin.

Make the puree

  1. Pound the remaining grouse meat with a little boiled rice.

  2. Moisten the mixture with the grouse essence.

  3. Pass the mixture through a tammy to create a puree.

Serve

  1. Warm the puree just before serving, taking care that it does not curdle.

  2. Pour the puree into a soup tureen with the reserved grouse pieces and small quenelles.

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. Carrot + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Carrot + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,873 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  3. Clove + shallottop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,677 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Carrot + oniontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

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

  5. Celery + clovetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,668 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-decalactone (peach, creamy).

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

What each ingredient does

Grouse
Provides the main meat flavour and body of the soup, both from the fillets and the bones.
Sherry
Adds acidity and aromatic depth that balance the rich meat and stock.
Rice
Thickens the puree and gives it a smooth, body-rich texture.
Stock
Supplies the liquid base and extracts flavour from the carcasses during boiling.
Shallots
Add a mild aromatic sweetness that rounds out the essence.

The step that matters

Warming the puree without curdling. Once the puree is hot, boiling or overheating can cause the proteins and starch to separate and turn grainy or curdled, so it should be warmed gently just before serving.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sherry, carrot, onion, celery, clove, shallot, rice):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sherry, carrot, onion, celery, clove, shallot, rice. 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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