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Rabbits with Fines Herbes

A rabbit stew with butter, mushrooms, parsley, shallots, sauce tournee, consommé, egg yolks, and lemon juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Rabbits with Fines Herbes

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the rabbit

  1. Melt butter over medium heat in a stewpan.

  2. Sweat the rabbit pieces with mushrooms, parsley, and shallots until set.

  3. Add sauce tournee and consommé.

  4. Simmer on low heat until the rabbit is cooked through.

  5. Remove the rabbit pieces.

Make the sauce

  1. Trim the best ones and place the trimmed rabbit pieces in another stewpan.

  2. Skim the cooking liquid.

  3. Reduce the liquid to a white sauce consistency.

  4. Strain the sauce over the rabbit.

  5. Keep the sauce warm in a bain-marie.

  6. Bring the sauce to a boil just before serving.

  7. Remove the sauce from heat.

  8. Stir in the egg yolks, lemon juice, and a bit of butter.

Serve

  1. Serve the rabbit pieces topped with the sauce.

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 + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Parsley + shallottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,737 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  3. Mushroom + shallottop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,982 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  4. Shallot + lemontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,523 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Butter + mushroomtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

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, which is cooked gently so it stays tender.
Sauce tournee
Forms the base of the sauce and gives it body.
Egg yolks
Thicken and enrich the sauce as they set gently with heat.
Mushrooms
Add moisture and earthy flavor to the rabbit.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich, buttery sauce.

The step that matters

Stirring in the egg yolks off the heat. Egg yolks thicken by gently coagulating proteins. If the sauce is too hot when they go in, they can scramble, leaving lumps instead of a smooth, silky sauce.

“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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