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Rabbit, a LA Chasseur

A rabbit dish cooked with clarified butter, shallot, mushrooms, truffles, herbs, and Espagnole sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Shallot and thyme match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,476 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Rabbit, a LA Chasseur

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Heat the clarified butter in a pan over medium heat.

  2. Season the rabbit joints with salt and pepper, then add to the pan.

  3. Sauté the rabbit until browned, then add the minced shallot and cook for 2 minutes.

  4. Stir in the mushrooms, truffles, and herbs, then cover and cook for 10 minutes.

  5. Pour in the Espagnole sauce and a pinch of nutmeg, then simmer for an additional 5 minutes.

  6. Serve hot.

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. Shallot + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,476 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  2. Pepper + thymetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,585 recipes

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

  3. Shallot + mushroomtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,982 recipes

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

  4. Mushroom + truffletop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,900 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

  5. Mushroom + thymetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

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 browns in the butter and becomes tender as it simmers.
Clarified butter
Fat that browns the rabbit without the milk solids burning, adding rich flavour.
Mushrooms
Release moisture and savoury flavour as they cook, adding body to the sauce.
Truffles
Contribute a strong earthy aroma that defines the dish.
Espagnole sauce
Brown sauce that adds body, depth and a glossy texture to the finished dish.

The step that matters

Browning the rabbit. Searing the joints until deeply browned builds the flavour base through the Maillard reaction. Pale rabbit gives a flat sauce, and crowding the pan causes steaming instead of browning.

Swap the thyme

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (rabbit, butter, pepper, shallot, mushroom, truffle, sauce):

  1. Capersfits about as well
  2. Thymethe original
  3. Tarragonfits about as well
  4. Parsleyfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against rabbit, butter, pepper, shallot, mushroom, truffle, sauce. 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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