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Rabbit Soup

A hearty soup made with rabbit, vegetables, wine, broth, and sherry.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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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 ↓

Rabbit Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Prepare the rabbit and cut it into ½ inch square pieces.

  2. In a saucepan, melt the butter over medium heat.

Make the soup

  1. Add the rabbit, celery, onion, and green pepper; brown for 10 minutes.

  2. Stir in the flour and cook for another minute.

  3. Add the water, red wine, strong broth, soup herbs, pepper, and salt.

  4. Let the mixture simmer for 1½ hours, stirring occasionally.

  5. Remove the herbs, mix in the sherry, and serve.

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. Celery + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

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

  2. Red wine + sherrytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together32 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  5. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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, which becomes tender during the long simmer.
Flour
Thickens the broth slightly as it cooks into the liquid.
Red wine
Adds acidity and depth to the broth as it simmers.
Onion
Browns in the butter to build sweetness and savory flavor in the base.
Butter
Carries the browning of the vegetables and rabbit, adding richness.

The step that matters

Browning the rabbit and vegetables. Browning in butter before adding liquid creates deeper, savory flavors through the Maillard reaction. Pale vegetables produce a flatter, less rich soup.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (rabbit, butter, celery, pepper, flour, red wine, sherry):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Carrotfits better
  3. Capsicumfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against rabbit, butter, celery, pepper, flour, red wine, sherry. 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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