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Rabbit Soup

A soup made with rabbit, stock, vegetables, herbs, and claret, finished with mushroom ketchup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and thyme match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,057 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Rabbit Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the rabbit

  1. Skin and empty the rabbit, setting the liver aside. Cut the rabbit into joints and fry them lightly.

  2. Place the rabbit joints and liver in a stewpan with the stock. Simmer gently for 1 hour, skimming off any scum that rises.

  3. Remove the rabbit, cut off the best meat, and place it in a covered dish in a cool place.

Make the soup

  1. Bruise the bones and return them to the stock along with the onions, shallot, carrot, parsley, thyme, celery, salt, and cayenne. Simmer for 2 more hours.

  2. Rub the liver until smooth with a wooden spoon, moisten with some broth, and return it to the soup.

  3. Just before serving, add the claret and mushroom ketchup.

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. Parsley + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Carrot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  3. Carrot + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  4. Shallot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,737 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  5. Shallot + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,476 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

What each ingredient does

Rabbit
Provides the main meat and body of the soup, with the joints giving flavour as they simmer.
Liver (in the method)
Smooth and rubbed into the broth, it thickens the soup and adds a rich, earthy depth.
Claret
Adds acidity and wine flavour that brightens the rich stock when added at the end.
Mushroom ketchup
Adds savoury, umami depth to the broth.

The step that matters

Skimming while the rabbit simmers. Scum rising from the meat during the first hour can cloud the stock and spoil its flavour, so it should be skimmed off as it forms.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (rabbit, shallot, carrot, parsley, thyme, celery, mushroom):

  1. Leekfits better
  2. Parsnipfits better
  3. Turnipfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against rabbit, shallot, carrot, parsley, thyme, celery, mushroom. 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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