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Rabbit, a LA Chasseur

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

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. Trim the pieces neatly and place them in a sauté pan with clarified butter, pepper, and salt.

Cook and make the sauce

  1. Fry over medium heat until light brown, then add chopped fine herbs.

  2. Cover and cook over low heat for about 10 minutes.

  3. Pour off excess grease, then add Espagnole sauce, mushrooms, truffles, quenelles, glaze, nutmeg, and lemon juice.

  4. Simmer for 3 minutes, then arrange rabbit pieces in a dish.

Serve

  1. Top with the ragout, pour sauce over, and garnish with croutons before serving.

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
Forms the main body of the dish, cooked gently until tender in the pan.
Clarified butter
Fries the rabbit to a light brown and adds rich flavour without milk solids burning.
Espagnole sauce
Provides the thick, savoury brown sauce that coats the rabbit and ragout.
Quenelles of rabbit
Add a soft, delicate texture to the ragout alongside the rabbit pieces.
Mushrooms and truffles
Contribute earthy, aromatic flavour to the ragout and sauce.

The step that matters

Fry until light brown before adding the herbs. Browning the rabbit in fat develops savoury flavour through the Maillard reaction. Adding herbs too early, or frying too hot, can scorch them and make the sauce bitter.

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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