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Rabbit Soup a LA Reink

A rabbit soup made with rabbit meat, vegetables, herbs, and cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Celery and carrot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,173 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Rabbit Soup a LA Reink

Ingredients

Directions

Stew the rabbits

  1. Wash and soak the rabbits thoroughly.

  2. Place them whole in a soup pot and add 7 pints of cold water or veal broth.

  3. Stew gently for about 45 minutes, then remove the rabbits.

Make the paste

  1. Take off the flesh from the backs and a little from the legs, mince it finely, and pound it into a smooth paste.

  2. Cover the paste and set it aside.

Make the soup

  1. Return the rabbit bodies to the pot along with onions, celery, carrots, savory herbs, mace, peppercorns, and salt.

  2. Stew softly for 3 hours.

  3. Strain the soup, let it settle, and pour off the clear liquid into a clean stewpan.

Finish and thicken

  1. Gradually mix in the pounded rabbit flesh while the soup is hot to avoid lumps.

  2. Season with pounded mace and cayenne to taste.

  3. Pass the soup through a coarse sieve.

  4. Wipe out the stewpan, return the soup to it, and stir in the cream mixed with arrowroot when it boils.

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. Celery + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

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

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

  3. Onion + celerytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,518 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Celery + arrowroottop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together114 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Carrot + arrowroottop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together164 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Young rabbits
Provide the meat and the flavour the broth is built on.
Cream
Adds richness and a smooth, mellow body to the finished soup.
Arrowroot
Thickens the hot soup into a silky texture without clouding it much.
Onions
Add sweetness and aromatic depth to the stock as it simmers.
Carrots
Add natural sweetness and body to the simmering stock.

The step that matters

Stirring in the cream and arrowroot. Arrowroot thickens only when the liquid reaches a boil, so the soup must be hot enough at that moment. Mixing the arrowroot into the cream first helps it disperse evenly, so the soup turns smooth rather than lumpy.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (rabbit, veal, onion, celery, carrot, cream, arrowroot):

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Turmericfits better
  3. Thymefits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against rabbit, veal, onion, celery, carrot, cream, arrowroot. 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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