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Rabbit Soup

A hearty soup made with rabbit, bacon, onions, herbs, mace, stock, cream, and croutons.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Cream and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Rabbit Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the rabbit

  1. In a saucepan, layer bacon, onions, herbs, and mace.

  2. Add rabbit pieces and cover with cold water.

  3. Bring to a boil, then reduce heat and simmer for 1.5 hours.

Make the soup

  1. In another saucepan, heat white stock until boiling.

  2. Strain the rabbit cooking liquid into the stock.

  3. Remove meat from bones, chop, and pound until smooth.

  4. Add pounded meat and roll crumb to the soup, simmer for 30 minutes.

  5. Strain the soup through a fine sieve, return to saucepan.

  6. Stir in cream, heat gently without boiling, and season with salt, pepper, and sugar.

Serve

  1. Serve in a soup tureen with toast or croutons.

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. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  3. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  4. Rabbit + creamtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together409 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

  5. Rabbit + oniontop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,292 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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 pounded to thicken and enrich the soup.
Thick cream
Adds richness and a smooth, silky body when stirred in at the end.
Roll crumb
Soaks up liquid and helps thicken the soup as it simmers.
Onions
Release sweetness and savoury depth into the cooking liquid.
Bacon
Adds smoky, savoury fat that flavours the cooking liquid.

The step that matters

Stirring in the cream without boiling. Boiling cream after it is added can cause it to separate and turn grainy, so it should be heated only gently to keep the soup smooth.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (rabbit, onion, cream, pepper, sugar, butter):

  1. Garlicfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Celeryfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against rabbit, onion, cream, pepper, sugar, butter. 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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