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Game Soup

A hearty soup made with game meat, bones, vegetables, herbs, spices, and a stock enriched with Bovril, wine, and egg yolks.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 17 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and allspice match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,874 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Game Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the stock

  1. Cut all the lean meat off the bones of the game and place the bones and trimmings in a pot.

  2. Add the sliced carrots, diced turnip, diced onion, sweet herbs, mushroom trimmings, salt, pepper, and a small bag containing cloves, allspice, and mace.

  3. Pour in 3 quarts of water and boil down to 2 quarts.

Finish and serve

  1. Meanwhile, mince the lean meat and pound it in a mortar.

  2. Strain the stock and stir in the pounded meat, Bovril, wine, and beaten egg yolks.

  3. Pour into a tureen and serve with sippets.

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. Clove + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Pepper + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  5. Pepper + allspicetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,395 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

What each ingredient does

Lean meat from cold game
Provides the body and rich meaty flavour of the soup when pounded and stirred in.
Egg yolks
Enriches and thickens the soup slightly, giving it a smoother, richer texture.
Bovril
Adds concentrated savoury, meaty depth to the stock.
Wine
Adds acidity and aromatic complexity that brightens the rich game flavour.

The step that matters

Stirring in the egg yolks. Egg yolks thicken when heated, so adding them to very hot soup can scramble them. Stir them in off the heat, or temper them first, to keep the soup smooth.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (meat, carrot, turnip, mushroom, pepper, clove, allspice):

  1. Parsnipfits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Leekfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, carrot, turnip, mushroom, pepper, clove, allspice. 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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