Skip to main content
Main

Rabbit Soup

A hearty rabbit soup made with stock, vegetables, and seasonings, finished with port wine and mushroom ketchup.

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

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. Cut the rabbit into joints and dust with flour.

  2. Fry the pieces lightly in a pan.

Make the broth

  1. Place the rabbit in a stewpan with the liver and stock.

  2. Simmer gently for 1 hour, skimming off any scum.

  3. Remove the rabbit.

  4. Cut off the best meat and keep it warm.

  5. Bruise the bones.

  6. Return the bruised bones to the stock with onions, shallot, carrot, parsley, thyme, celery, salt, and cayenne.

  7. Simmer the broth for 2 more hours.

  8. Remove the liver.

  9. Mash the liver smooth.

  10. Moisten the liver with some broth before returning it to the soup.

Finish and serve

  1. Just before serving, add port wine and mushroom ketchup.

  2. Cut the reserved meat into dice.

  3. Heat the diced meat without boiling.

  4. Serve immediately.

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, which becomes tender and flavourful as it simmers in the stock.
Stock
Forms the liquid base of the soup and carries the flavour of the bones and vegetables.
Liver (in the method)
Thickens the broth and adds richness when mashed smooth and stirred back in.
Port wine
Adds sweetness and depth of flavour when stirred in just before serving.
Onions
Build savoury sweetness and aroma as they cook slowly in the broth.

The step that matters

Heat the diced meat without boiling. Boiling toughens cooked meat and makes it dry and stringy, so the diced rabbit should be warmed gently just until hot.

Swap the onion

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

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

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

More rabbit soup recipes

Brown 10Curry 4 See all 103 →

You might also like

Carrot SoupCarrot Soup134 recipesCream of Celery SoupCream of Celery Soup113 recipesMushroom SoupMushroom Soup60 recipesCelery StewCelery Stew25 recipes