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Brown Rabbit Soup

A hearty soup made from rabbit, onions, carrots, parsley, and peppercorns simmered in water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,053 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Brown Rabbit Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the rabbits into joints, then flour and lightly fry them.

  2. Fry the onions until they are a clear brown.

Make the soup

  1. Gradually pour the boiling water over the fried rabbits and onions.

  2. Add the salt, skimming off any scum that rises.

  3. Add the parsley, carrots, and peppercorns.

  4. Boil the mixture gently for 5 to 5.5 hours.

Finish and serve

  1. Strain the soup and let it cool to skim off the fat.

  2. Reheat the soup and serve with sippets of fried bread.

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. Carrot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

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

  2. Onion + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

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

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Rabbits
Provide the meat that becomes tender and flavourful during the long gentle simmer.
Flour
Coats the rabbit joints so they brown lightly and help thicken the soup.
Onions
Frying them to a clear brown adds sweetness and deep savoury flavour to the broth.
Carrots
Add gentle sweetness and body to the broth as they soften during simmering.

The step that matters

Skimming the scum. Scum that rises during boiling contains impurities and proteins that would cloud the broth and taste bitter, so it should be removed as it forms.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Turnipfits better
  3. Parsnipfits better
  4. Onionthe original

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