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Venison Soup

A hearty soup made from venison, ham, onion, celery, mace, butter, and wine, simmered for hours.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and celery match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 16,012 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Venison Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the soup base

  1. Combine venison, ham, minced onion, and black pepper in a pot.

  2. Add enough water to cover the meat.

  3. Stew gently for 1 hour, keeping the pot covered.

  4. Skim the surface.

  5. Pour in 1 quart of boiling water.

  6. Add celery and mace.

  7. Boil gently for 24 hours.

Finish and serve

  1. Incorporate butter and flour mixture.

  2. Add port or Madeira wine.

  3. Boil for an additional 30 minutes.

  4. Serve with the meat 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. Pepper + celerytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

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

  2. Onion + celerytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,518 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  4. Ham + meattop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,095 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  5. Venison + hamtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

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

What each ingredient does

Venison
Provides the main meat flavour and body, and becomes tender during the long gentle simmer.
Ham
Adds savoury, salty depth to the broth during the long simmer.
Butter and flour
Flour rolled into the butter thickens the soup and gives it a richer, silkier body.
Port or madeira wine
Adds sweetness, acidity and aromatic depth to the finished soup.
Celery
Contributes aromatic, vegetal flavour to the broth.

The step that matters

Boil gently for 24 hours. A prolonged gentle simmer slowly extracts flavour and collagen from the meat and bones, while a hard rolling boil can toughen the meat and cloud the broth. Keep the heat low and steady, and top up water as needed.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (venison, ham, onion, pepper, meat, celery, butter):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against venison, ham, onion, pepper, meat, celery, 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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