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Partridge and Pheasant Soup

A hearty soup made with partridges or pheasants, ham, beef, celery, onions, and broth.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Beef and onion are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,092 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Partridge and Pheasant Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare and brown

  1. Skin the birds and cut them into pieces.

  2. In a large pan, fry the bird pieces, ham, beef, celery, and onions in butter until browned, being careful not to burn them.

Stew and strain

  1. Transfer the mixture to a stewpan, add boiling water, peppercorns, and salt.

  2. Stew gently for 2 hours.

  3. Strain the soup through a sieve back into the stewpan.

Finish and serve

  1. Add stewed celery and fried bread, and heat until near boiling.

  2. Skim the surface, pour into a tureen, and 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.

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. Beef + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,092 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Celery + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,518 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Ham + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,536 recipes

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

  5. Pheasant + beeftop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together131 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

Birds
Provide the main meat and rich flavour that forms the body of the soup.
Gravy beef
Adds meaty flavour and body to the broth as it stews slowly.
Onions
Browning in butter builds sweetness and savoury depth into the soup.
Ham
Contributes salty, smoky flavour that seasons the broth.
Celery
Adds aromatic, savoury flavour to the stock.

The step that matters

Frying the birds, ham, beef, celery and onions until browned. Browning creates savoury, deeply flavoured compounds through the Maillard reaction. If the pan is overheated and the butter burns, the soup will taste bitter, so the pieces should be watched closely and turned often.

Swap the celery

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pheasant, ham, beef, onion, butter, bread):

  1. Garlicfits better
  2. Thymefits about as well
  3. Celerythe original
  4. Capersfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against pheasant, ham, beef, onion, butter, bread. 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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