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Rabbit Soup a LA Reine

A rabbit soup made by stewing rabbit bodies, then adding minced rabbit flesh, herbs, and cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Celery and carrot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,173 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Rabbit Soup a LA Reine

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the rabbits

  1. Wash and soak the rabbits thoroughly.

  2. Place the rabbits whole in a soup pot and add 7 pints of cold water or veal broth.

  3. Stew gently for about 45 minutes.

  4. Remove the rabbits from the pot.

  5. Take off the flesh from the backs and a little from the legs. Mince the removed flesh finely. Pound the minced flesh into a smooth paste. Cover the paste and set it aside.

Make the soup

  1. Return the rabbit bodies to the pot along with onions, celery, carrots, savory herbs, mace, peppercorns, and salt. Stew softly for 3 hours.

  2. Strain the soup. Let the strained soup settle. Pour off the clear liquid into a clean saucepan.

Finish and serve

  1. Gradually mix the hot liquid with the pounded rabbit flesh, being careful to avoid lumps. Season the mixture with pounded mace and cayenne to taste. Strain the seasoned mixture through a coarse sieve.

  2. Return the strained soup to the saucepan. When boiling, stir in the cream mixed with arrowroot. Add salt if needed.

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 + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Onion + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Celery + arrowroottop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together114 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Carrot + arrowroottop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together164 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Rabbits
Provide the meat that is pounded into a paste to give the soup body and flavour.
Heavy cream
Adds richness and a smooth, velvety mouthfeel to the finished soup.
Arrowroot
Thickens the soup as it boils, giving it a silky body without flour.
Celery
Builds the aromatic base of the broth as it stews.

The step that matters

Adding the cream and arrowroot. Arrowroot must be mixed smoothly with the cream and added while the soup is boiling to thicken properly; added to cold or unmixed, it clumps and the soup stays thin or grainy.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (rabbit, veal, onion, celery, carrot, cream, arrowroot):

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Turmericfits better
  3. Thymefits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against rabbit, veal, onion, celery, carrot, cream, arrowroot. 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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