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Another Pheasant Soup

A soup made from pheasant stock, mashed pheasant breasts, mushrooms, and seasoned with mace, cayenne, and sea salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Another Pheasant Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the stock

  1. Boil down the half-roasted pheasants to make stock.

  2. Strain the stock and reheat it.

Make the paste

  1. Pound the pheasant breasts with the soaked bread until smooth.

  2. Melt the butter in a pan.

  3. Sauté the mushrooms for 10 to 15 minutes without browning.

  4. Add the sautéed mushrooms to the mortar and pound with the other ingredients.

Finish and serve

  1. Strain the soup again, bring it to a boil, and serve with fried bread slices.

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. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  2. Mushroom + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

  3. Bread + mushroomtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,536 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  4. Pheasant + mushroomtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together145 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

  5. Pheasant + breadtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together239 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

Pheasant breasts
Pounded to a fine paste, they give the soup its body and rich meaty flavor.
Bread soaked in gravy
Adds body and helps bind the pounded pheasant into a smooth, thick paste.
Fresh butter
Adds richness and fat to carry flavor and soften the mushrooms.
Mushrooms
Contribute earthy flavor and a tender texture to the pounded mixture.

The step that matters

Sautéing the mushrooms without browning. Browned mushrooms turn bitter and darker, which would muddy the pale, delicate soup. Cooking them gently in butter keeps their flavor mild and their color light.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pheasant, bread, mushroom, butter):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Garlicfits better
  3. Nutmegfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pheasant, bread, mushroom, butter. 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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