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Rabbit Soup

A rabbit soup with butter, onions, flour, stock, parsley, bay leaves, and sago.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and parsley are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 25,843 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Rabbit Soup

Ingredients

Directions

  1. In a pot, melt the butter and add the chopped onions.

  2. Brown the rabbit pieces in the onions, stirring carefully.

  3. Add the flour, stock or water, chopped parsley, salt, and bay leaves.

  4. Cook until the rabbit is tender.

  5. Strain the broth through a sieve and return it to the pot.

  6. Bring the broth to a boil and add sago until it thickens.

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. Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + parsleytop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,675 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Rabbit + oniontop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,292 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Rabbit + flourtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetaldehyde (pungent, ethereal).

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 as the soup simmers.
Onions
Soften and sweeten as they cook in butter, building the flavour base of the broth.
Flour
Lightly thickens the broth and helps it coat the meat and vegetables.
Sago
Thickens the broth as it heats, giving it body.

The step that matters

Bring the broth to a boil and add sago until it thickens. Sago thickens only as its starch swells in hot liquid and can clump if added carelessly. Adding it gradually to a boiling broth, while stirring, helps it disperse evenly and thicken smoothly.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (rabbit, butter, flour, parsley):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Chivefits better
  3. Leekfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against rabbit, butter, flour, parsley. 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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