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Quenelle of Rabbit

A quenelle made from boiled rabbit, egg, cream, mace, and white pepper, then boiled and served with white sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Mace and white pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,695 recipes. Both carry myrcene, which smells balsamic, herbaceous. The science ↓

Quenelle of Rabbit

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the filling

  1. Half boil the rabbit, then remove the meat and mince it.

  2. Pound the minced meat in a mortar and mix it into a stiff paste with the egg and cream.

  3. Season the mixture with mace and white pepper.

Cook and serve

  1. Put the mixture into a mold and tie it up in a cloth.

  2. Boil for 45 minutes.

  3. Turn it out and pour over a white sauce.

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. Mace + white peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,695 recipes

    Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).

  2. Rabbit + creamtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together409 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

  3. Cream + macetop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,009 recipes
  4. Egg + white peppertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,312 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyraldehyde (malty, chocolate).

  5. Egg + creamtop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together42,166 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

Egg and cream barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 42,166 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 body of the quenelle, which is minced and bound into a paste.
Egg
Binds the minced meat so it sets firm when boiled.
Cream
Adds moisture and softness, keeping the paste from drying out as it cooks.

The step that matters

Pound the minced meat into a stiff paste. Thorough pounding breaks the meat into a fine, even texture, and mixing in the egg and cream evenly helps the quenelle hold together and set smoothly when boiled.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (rabbit, egg, cream, white pepper):

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Tarragonfits better
  3. Parsleyfits about as well
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against rabbit, egg, cream, white 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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