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Rabbit Souffle

A light, airy rabbit soufflé served with brown sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Rabbit Souffle

Ingredients

Directions

Make the base

  1. Melt the butter in a saucepan over low heat.

  2. Add the flour and stir in the milk, cooking gently for 10 minutes.

  3. Remove the sauce from heat and let it cool.

Prepare the mixture

  1. Pound the rabbit meat until smooth, then mix in the egg yolks.

  2. Add the cooled white sauce and season with salt and pepper.

  3. Pass the mixture through a wire sieve.

  4. Fold in the stiffly whipped egg whites.

Steam and serve

  1. Pour the mixture into a well-buttered souffle dish.

  2. Steam gently for 40 to 50 minutes.

  3. Serve with brown sauce poured around the souffle.

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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Rabbit + flourtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetaldehyde (pungent, ethereal).

  4. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Butter + saucetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,338 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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 main savoury body and flavour of the soufflé.
Eggs
Whipped whites lift the mixture, while yolks add richness and help it set.
Butter
Enriches the base sauce and adds fat for a tender texture.
Flour
Thickens the milk into a white sauce that gives the soufflé its structure.
Milk
Forms the liquid of the white sauce, giving a smooth, moist base.

The step that matters

Fold in the stiffly whipped egg whites. Whites hold air only when whipped stiff and folded in gently, so the soufflé rises. Overmixing deflates the foam and leaves a dense result.

“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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