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Quenelles of Rabbit

Rabbit quenelles made with rabbit meat, calf udder, mushrooms, and white sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Thyme and parsley 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 ↓

Quenelles of Rabbit

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the meats

  1. Remove the meat from the boiled rabbit, discarding skin and sinew.

  2. Pound the meat until smooth and press through a sieve.

  3. Place the calf's udder in a stewpan with enough cold water to cover it. Boil gently until cooked, then cool and trim.

  4. Chop the udder. Pound the udder in a mortar. Press the udder through a sieve.

Make the panada

  1. In a stewpan, combine chopped mushrooms, butter, lemon peel, shallot, thyme, parsley, pepper, and salt. Steam the mixture over low heat for 10 minutes.

  2. Soak the crumbs from the French rolls in milk. Squeeze out the moisture from the crumbs and add them to the stewpan with the seasoning.

  3. Add white sauce and cook over low heat until the mixture is dry and pulls away from the sides of the pan. Remove from heat and mix in the egg yolk.

  4. Combine the panada, calf's udder, and pounded rabbit meat, and let cool for 1 hour.

Shape and poach

  1. Take equal parts of each mixture, pound together with a whole egg, and press through a sieve to form the quenelles.

  2. Poach a small piece in boiling water to test seasoning and texture. If firm and light, shape the quenelles.

  3. Poach the quenelles in boiling water until firm, about 3 to 12 minutes depending on size.

  4. Serve on a hot dish with white sauce flavored with mushrooms.

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. Thyme + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Lemon + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  3. Lemon + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,973 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  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 meat
Provides the main body and savoury flavour of the quenelles.
Calf's udder
Adds soft, smooth body to the mixture, binding the meat.
French rolls crumbs
Soaked in milk, they form a panada that gives the quenelles a light, tender texture.
Egg
Binds the mixture and helps it set firm when poached.
Butter
Adds richness and carries the flavour of the mushrooms and aromatics.
Mushrooms
Add earthy flavour and moisture to the panada.

The step that matters

Drying the panada. Cooking the mixture until it is dry and pulls away from the pan removes excess moisture. If it stays wet, the quenelles will be loose and may fall apart when poached.

“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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