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Rabbit Soup

A soup made with rabbit, onion, celery, turnip, stock, herbs, and optionally thickened with cornflour and cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and thyme match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,057 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Rabbit Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Simmer the stock

  1. Skin and wash the rabbit, setting aside the head, liver, and kidney for gravy.

  2. Boil the rabbit in water.

  3. Strain the liquid and add the vegetables and herbs.

  4. Cook in the stock until the meat falls off the bones.

Strip and simmer again

  1. Remove the rabbit from the pot.

  2. Cut the meat into small pieces.

  3. Return the bones to the soup.

  4. Boil for another hour.

Thicken and finish

  1. Strain and thicken with cornflour to a cream-like consistency.

  2. Add the rabbit pieces back to the soup to heat through.

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 + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Celery + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,810 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Turnip + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,842 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

Rabbit
Provides the main meat, and its bones and connective tissue flavour the broth as it simmers.
Spanish onion
Adds savoury sweetness and aroma to the broth as it cooks down.
Celery
Contributes aromatic, savoury flavour to the stock during the long simmer.
Turnip
Adds subtle sweetness and body to the soup as it softens.
Cornflour
Thickens the broth as its starch swells when heated in liquid.

The step that matters

Thicken with cornflour. Cornflour must be fully mixed into cold or cool liquid before heating, then simmered. Its starch granules swell and gelatinise at near-boiling temperatures, giving a smooth, cream-like body. Added dry or undissolved, it forms lumps and leaves a raw starchy taste.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (rabbit, celery, turnip, parsley, thyme, cream, pepper):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against rabbit, celery, turnip, parsley, thyme, cream, 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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