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Pheasant Soup

A hearty soup made from roasted pheasant, beef broth, butter, bread crumbs, spices, and rice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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 birds

  1. Roast the pheasants until half cooked, then coat them with flour thickly.

  2. Once nearly cold, remove the flesh from the breasts and set aside, covering it to keep it fresh.

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

Make the soup

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

  2. Strain the soup and press as much liquid as possible from the pheasants.

Make the paste and finish

  1. Let the soup cool, then remove the skins from the breasts, chop them finely, and pound them into a paste with the butter and bread crumbs.

  2. Season the paste with cayenne, salt, mace, and nutmeg to taste.

  3. Prepare the rice and add as needed to the soup, adjusting for the stock's reduction.

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

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

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

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

  4. Nutmeg + ricetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,779 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 of the soup, with breast meat pounded into a rich paste.
Beef broth
Forms the liquid base and carries the flavour of the birds during the long stew.
Fresh butter
Adds richness and a smooth texture to the pounded breast paste.
Dry bread crumbs
Bind the pounded meat paste so it holds together and thickens the mixture.
Rice
Adds body and starch, thickening the soup as it is added.

The step that matters

Pounding the breast paste with butter and bread crumbs. The paste must be cool and finely chopped before pounding; if warm or coarse, the fat separates and the texture turns grainy instead of smooth and binding.

Swap the mace

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

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

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