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Puree of Chicken, Pheasant, or Rabbit a LA Reine

A creamy puree of chicken, pheasant, or rabbit simmered with vegetables and stock, finished with cream and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and celery 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 ↓

Puree of Chicken, Pheasant, or Rabbit a LA Reine

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the meat

  1. Wash and clean the rabbits or hen thoroughly.

  2. Stew the meat in 3 pints of White Stock for 1 hour.

  3. Remove the meat and pound it with 2 ounces of butter in a mortar.

  4. Rub the mixture through a wire sieve with some of the stock.

Make the soup

  1. Return the carcass to the stock and add the sliced vegetables and salt.

  2. Let it stew for 2 hours.

  3. Strain the stock and beat the vegetables through a hair sieve, omitting the turnips and carrots.

  4. Incorporate the meat puree into the stock gradually.

  5. Add 1 pint of cream, 1 teaspoon of sugar, and adjust seasoning with salt to taste.

Serve

  1. Serve with fried croutons.

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 + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Celery + turniptop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Turnip + oniontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Carrot + oniontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Meat (rabbit, hen, or pheasant)
Pounded into a puree that thickens the soup and gives it body.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, silky mouthfeel to the pounded meat.
Cream
Adds richness and a smooth, velvety texture to the finished puree.
Onions
Build savoury depth and aroma in the stock as they stew.
Celery
Adds aromatic flavour to the stock as it stews.

The step that matters

Incorporate the meat puree into the stock gradually. Adding the puree slowly and stirring keeps it evenly dispersed, so it blends smoothly instead of forming lumps and thickening unevenly.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (rabbit, butter, carrot, celery, turnip, cream, sugar):

  1. Leekfits better
  2. Parsnipfits better
  3. Mustardfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against rabbit, butter, carrot, celery, turnip, cream, sugar. 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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