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Stewed Rabbit, Soubise Sauce

A stew of rabbit simmered with bacon, salt, and pepper, served with a creamy onion sauce called Soubise.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and onion are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 68,474 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Stewed Rabbit, Soubise Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the rabbit

  1. Gut the rabbits.

  2. Steep the rabbits in cold water overnight to whiten them.

  3. Stew the rabbits until tender.

  4. Season the cooking liquid with salt, pepper, and bacon.

Make the Soubise sauce

  1. Chop the onions.

  2. Stew the onions in water until tender enough to mash.

  3. Pass the onion mixture through a coarse strainer.

  4. Add salt and milk to the puree.

  5. Boil the onion sauce.

  6. Thicken it until it coats the back of a spoon.

Serve

  1. Serve the rabbit with a spoonful of the Soubise sauce poured over it.

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. Pepper + oniontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Rabbit + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together284 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Rabbit + peppertop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,334 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-pentylpyridine (fat).

  5. Onion + milktop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

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 becomes tender through long, slow stewing.
Bacon
Adds smoky, salty fat that flavours the cooking liquid.
Onions
Cook down and mash into the body of the sauce, giving it sweetness and thickness.
Milk
Adds creaminess and softness to the onion purée, mellowing its texture.

The step that matters

Thicken the Soubise sauce to coat the spoon. Boiling reduces the liquid and lets the starch and fibre of the mashed onion set the sauce. Stop too early and it runs thin; boil too long after adding milk and it may catch or split.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Potatofits better
  3. Asparagusfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against rabbit, pepper, milk. 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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