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Rabbit Soup, White

A clear rabbit broth with vegetables, seasoned with herbs and spices, thickened with bread and rice or arrowroot, finished with cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 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, White

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the rabbit

  1. Soak the rabbit parts in lukewarm water for 30 minutes.

  2. Cut the rabbit into small pieces and place in a stewpan with enough stock to barely cover them.

  3. Simmer gently until the meat is cooked.

  4. Remove and pick the meat from the bones.

Make the soup

  1. Return the bones to the stock with carrot, turnip, onion, parsley, thyme, pepper, salt, and mace.

  2. Add 1½ pints of additional stock and simmer for 2 hours.

  3. Strain the soup.

  4. Let it cool.

Finish and serve

  1. Mince the meat and pound it until smooth.

  2. Mix in the soaked bread and gradually moisten with the strained stock.

  3. Boil for 15 minutes.

  4. Add cream mixed with ground rice or arrowroot.

  5. Boil once more.

  6. Serve.

  7. If using, stir in the hard-boiled egg yolk without boiling the soup again.

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 + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  5. Turnip + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,842 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Rabbit
Provides the meat that is pounded into the soup, giving body and savoury flavour.
Stale bread
Soaked in milk and mixed in, it thickens the soup and adds a soft, smooth texture.
Cream
Adds richness and a smooth, mellow body to the finished soup.
Ground rice or arrowroot
Starch that thickens the cream and helps keep the soup smooth and stable when boiled.
Onion
Adds aromatic sweetness and depth to the stock as it simmers.

The step that matters

Add the egg yolk without reboiling. Egg yolk thickens and can curdle or turn grainy when it gets too hot, so it is stirred in off the heat or at low heat after the final boil.

Swap the mace

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against rabbit, carrot, turnip, onion, parsley, thyme, pepper. 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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