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Rabbit Soup

A clear soup made with rabbit, ham or pork, onions, water, milk, flour, pepper, and sea salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and pepper 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 ↓

Rabbit Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the broth

  1. Wash the rabbit well and cut it into small joints.

  2. Put the rabbit, cold water, sliced onions, and cut-up bacon into a saucepan. Season with pepper and coarse sea salt.

  3. Bring to a boil and skim off any foam.

  4. Simmer gently for three hours.

  5. Strain the soup and carefully remove all fat.

  6. Return the soup to the saucepan.

Thicken and serve

  1. To thicken, blend the flour with the milk and strain it into the soup.

  2. Stir until it boils.

  3. Cook for five minutes.

  4. Season to taste and serve with diced toasted bread.

  5. If you want it unthickened, heat it and stir in 1 teaspoon of chopped parsley before serving.

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. Onion + peppertop 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 + flourtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetaldehyde (pungent, ethereal).

  4. Rabbit + hamtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together273 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Milk and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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 flavour that the broth is built on.
Onions
Add sweetness and aroma to the broth as it simmers.
Flour
Thickens the soup when blended with milk and stirred in to boil.
Milk
Mixed with flour to give the thickened soup a creamier body.

The step that matters

Skimming the foam after boiling. Foam that rises at the start carries impurities and fat that can cloud the broth and taste bitter, so it should be removed before simmering.

Swap the onion

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

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

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