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Soup

Pheasant Soup

A hearty soup made with pheasant, ham, onions, celery, French roll crumbs, and egg yolks.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Pheasant Soup

Why it works: Celery and pepper 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 ↓

Pheasant Soup

Ingredients

Directions

  1. In a large pot, melt the butter over medium heat.

  2. Add the sliced onions and celery, cooking until softened.

  3. Stir in the ham and cook for a few more minutes.

  4. Add the pheasants and enough water to cover them.

  5. Simmer until the pheasants are tender.

  6. Remove the pheasants, shred the meat, and return it to the pot.

  7. Add the French roll crumbs and stir well.

  8. Mix in the hard-boiled egg yolks, salt, and cayenne pepper.

  9. Serve hot.

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. Celery + peppertop 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. Butter + oniontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Pheasant + celerytop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together124 recipes

    Shared aroma: sabinene (woody, terpenic).

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, which becomes tender and flavours the broth as it simmers.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and carries flavour from the onions and celery.
French rolls
Their crumbs soften in the broth and thicken the soup slightly.
Hard-boiled egg yolks
Their rich, crumbly texture enriches the soup and helps give it body.
Onions
Soften during cooking and add sweetness and savoury depth to the base.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pheasant, butter, ham, celery, egg, pepper):

  1. Leekfits better
  2. Mustardfits better
  3. Capsicumfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pheasant, butter, ham, celery, egg, pepper. 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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