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Pheasant Soup

A soup made from roasted hare remains, beef broth, and pheasant parts, finished with meat balls.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 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

Stew the birds

  1. Remove all the flesh from the pheasant breasts and set aside, covering to keep fresh.

  2. Cut the remaining bird parts into joints, bruise them, and stew in beef broth for 2 to 3 hours.

  3. Strain the soup, pressing out as much liquid as possible from the pheasants.

Make the balls

  1. Cool the soup, then mince the breast meat and pound it with half as much butter and dry bread crumbs.

  2. Season the mixture with cayenne, salt, mace, nutmeg, and minced boiled shallots.

  3. Moisten the mixture with egg yolks and roll into small balls, dusting with flour.

Finish and poach

  1. Skim the fat from the soup, heat it in a clean pot, and bring to a boil.

  2. Add the balls to the boiling soup and poach for 10 to 12 minutes, ensuring the soup is well-seasoned.

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. Nutmeg + shallottop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,019 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

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

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

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

  5. Beef + peppertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,971 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Beef broth
Provides the liquid base that extracts flavour from the bird parts.
Fresh butter
Adds richness and a soft, moist texture to the meat mixture.
Dry bread crumbs
Absorb moisture and help bind the minced meat into a shapeable mixture.
Egg yolks
Bind the mixture and set when heated, helping the balls hold together.
Flour
Dusted on the balls to keep their surface dry and less sticky while shaping.

The step that matters

Poaching the balls. Heat sets the egg yolks and bread crumbs so the balls firm up and hold together; a rough boil can break them apart.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Tarragonfits better
  3. Capersfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, butter, bread, pepper, nutmeg, shallot, egg. 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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