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Rabbit Soup, Superior

A hearty rabbit soup made with stock, vegetables, herbs, and pounded rabbit meat thickened with cream and arrowroot.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 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, Superior

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the rabbit

  1. Soak the rabbits in lukewarm water for 1 hour and drain.

  2. Place the rabbits in a stewpan with the white stock and simmer gently until tender.

  3. Remove the rabbits, then pick the best meat from the bones.

  4. Bruise the bones.

Make the broth

  1. Return the bones to the broth along with the carrots, onions, celery, parsley, thyme, bay leaf, mace, peppercorns, and salt.

  2. Simmer gently for 3 hours.

  3. Strain the broth and let it settle.

  4. Once the broth is cold, pour off the clear liquid.

Finish the soup

  1. Mince the rabbit meat and pound it until smooth, then set aside.

  2. Bring the clear broth to a boil.

  3. Gradually moisten the pounded meat with warm broth, mixing until free of lumps.

  4. Add the thickened meat to the boiling broth.

  5. Season with additional salt and cayenne.

  6. Strain through a sieve.

  7. In a clean saucepan, mix the cream with the arrowroot, then stir into the boiling soup.

  8. Let the soup boil again.

  9. Serve hot, optionally with fried toast sippets dipped in cream.

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. Celery + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,810 recipes

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

  5. Carrot + thymetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

What each ingredient does

Rabbits
Provide the main meat, which is cooked until tender and then pounded into the soup.
White stock
Forms the savoury liquid base that the soup is built on.
Cream
Adds richness and a smooth, velvety body to the finished soup.
Arrowroot
Thickens the boiling soup so it becomes smooth and lightly body-rich.
Carrots
Add sweetness and depth of flavour to the broth as it simmers.
Onions
Add savoury depth and aroma to the broth as it simmers.

The step that matters

Adding the arrowroot and cream. Arrowroot thickens when it boils, so the cream and arrowroot mixture should be stirred into the soup while it is boiling, then brought back to a boil. Adding it to a simmer or boiling too long can leave the soup thin or cause the cream to separate.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Marjoramfits better
  2. Winter savoryfits better
  3. Tarragonfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against rabbit, veal, carrot, onion, celery, parsley, thyme. 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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