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Rabbit, a LA Chasseur

A rabbit dish cooked with clarified butter, herbs, Espagnole sauce, mushrooms, truffles, and lemon, served with fried bread croutons.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and shallot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,737 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Rabbit, a LA Chasseur

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the rabbit

  1. Cut the rabbit into small joints: remove hind legs, shoulders, split the head, and divide the loins into six pieces.

  2. Place the rabbit pieces in a sauté pan with clarified butter, pepper, and salt.

  3. Fry over medium heat until light brown.

Make the sauce

  1. Add chopped fine herbs and cover, cooking over low heat for 10 minutes.

  2. Remove excess grease, then add Espagnole sauce, mushrooms, truffles, quenelles, glaze, nutmeg, and lemon juice.

  3. Simmer for 3 minutes, then arrange rabbit pieces on a serving dish.

Serve

  1. Pour the sauce over the rabbit and garnish with croutons of fried bread.

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

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

  2. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  3. Mushroom + shallottop 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. 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 becomes tender as it cooks gently in fat and sauce.
Clarified butter
Fat for frying that browns the rabbit pieces and adds rich flavour.
Espagnole sauce
Brown sauce base that gives the dish body, depth, and a glossy coating.
Quenelles of rabbit
Soft, delicate rabbit dumplings that add texture and echo the main meat.
Mushrooms
Add earthy aroma and savoury depth to the sauce.
Truffles
Add a concentrated, intensely aromatic flavour to the sauce.

The step that matters

Frying until light brown. Browning the rabbit over medium heat builds flavour through the Maillard reaction. Too little colour gives a pale, flat taste, while too much heat can scorch the fat and make the meat dry.

Swap the parsley

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

  1. Capersfits about as well
  2. Thymefits about as well
  3. Tarragonfits about as well
  4. Parsleythe original

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