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Brown Rabbit Soup

A hearty rabbit soup simmered with onions, carrots, parsley, and peppercorns.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and carrot 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 the rabbit

  1. Flour the rabbit joints and lightly fry them.

  2. Add the fried onions and pour in the boiling water.

  3. Stir in the salt.

  4. Remove any scum that rises.

Simmer

  1. Add the parsley, carrots, and peppercorns.

  2. Boil gently for 5 to 5.5 hours, adding more salt if needed.

Strain and finish

  1. Strain the soup.

  2. Let it cool to skim off the fat.

  3. Reheat the soup.

  4. Serve with fried bread.

  5. Optionally, thicken with rice flour or browned flour.

  6. Optionally, add mushroom catsup or Harvey's sauce.

  7. Optionally, add a few drops of eschalot wine or vinegar.

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 + carrottop 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. Carrot + ricetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,477 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  4. Rice + mushroomtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,515 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Rabbit
Provides the meat and body of the soup as it simmers for hours.
Flour
Coats the rabbit joints so they brown lightly and add savour to the broth.
Onions
Frying to clear brown builds deep, sweet savoury flavour in the broth.
Carrots
Add sweetness and body to the broth during the long simmer.
Parsley
Adds a fresh, herbal aroma to the simmering broth.

The step that matters

Skimming the fat after cooling. Fat that rises as the soup cools solidifies on top, so it can be lifted off cleanly. Skimming while hot leaves greasy droplets in the broth.

Swap the onion

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

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

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