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Rabbit Soup

A hearty soup made with rabbit, split peas, onions, celery, butter, and seasonings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Celery and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 16,012 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Rabbit Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the rabbit

  1. Soak the rabbit joints in cold water for 1 hour.

  2. Dry the rabbit and fry in butter until half cooked.

  3. Add chopped onions and celery to the pan and cook briefly.

Make the soup

  1. Pour in 3 quarts of cold water and add split peas, pepper, and salt.

  2. Let the mixture stew gently for 4 to 5 hours.

  3. Strain the soup and serve.

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. Celery + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

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

  2. Onion + celerytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,518 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

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

  4. Celery + peastop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,832 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

  5. Onion + peastop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,460 recipes

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

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Rabbit
Provides the meat that gives the soup its savory, rich flavor.
Butter
Fat that browns the rabbit and carries flavor from the pan into the soup.
Onions
Add sweetness and aroma as they soften and brown in the butter.
Split peas
Break down during long simmering, thickening the soup and giving it body.
Celery
Adds aromatic, savory flavor as it cooks with the onions.

The step that matters

Let the mixture stew gently for 4 to 5 hours. A gentle simmer lets the split peas and rabbit break down slowly and release flavor and body into the water. Boiling hard can make the meat tough and cloud the soup.

Swap the peas

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

  1. Beansfits better
  2. Chestnutfits better
  3. Walnutfits better
  4. Peasthe original

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