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Another Pheasant Soup

A soup made from half-roasted pheasants, stock, bread, mushrooms, butter, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 base

  1. Boil down the half-roasted pheasants as directed in the previous recipe.

  2. Strain the soup.

Make the purée

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

  2. Stew the sliced mushrooms in butter for 10 to 15 minutes without browning.

  3. Add the stewed mushrooms to the mortar.

  4. Pound the mixture with the other ingredients.

  5. Pass the mixture through a strainer.

Finish and serve

  1. Reheat the soup.

  2. Bring the mixture to a boil.

  3. 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

Pheasants
Provide the main meat and flavour that the stock is boiled down from.
Bread soaked in gravy
Adds body and thickens the pounded mixture so it becomes smooth.
Mushrooms
Add earthy flavour and soft texture to the purée.
Butter
Carries flavour and enriches the mushrooms as they stew.

The step that matters

Stewing the mushrooms without browning. Browning gives bitter, toasted flavours that would change the pale, delicate soup, so the heat should stay gentle while the mushrooms soften in butter.

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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