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Soup

Brown Rabbit Soup

A soup made with rabbit joints, onions, carrots, parsley, and peppercorns, simmered for several hours.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and carrot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,053 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Brown Rabbit Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the rabbit

  1. Flour the rabbit joints.

  2. Fry the rabbit joints lightly.

  3. Add the fried onions.

Simmer the soup

  1. Pour in the boiling water.

  2. Stir in the salt.

  3. Remove any scum that rises.

  4. Add the parsley, carrots, and peppercorns.

  5. Boil gently for 5 to 5.5 hours until the rabbit is soft.

  6. Strain the soup.

Finish and serve

  1. Let it cool to skim off the fat.

  2. Reheat the soup.

  3. Optionally thicken with rice flour or wheaten flour.

  4. Optionally add mushroom catsup or Harvey's sauce.

  5. Serve with 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 + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Carrot + ricetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,477 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  4. Rice + mushroomtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,515 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

  5. Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

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

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 becomes tender during long simmering, giving the soup its body and flavor.
Flour
Coats the rabbit so it browns in the frying fat and helps thicken the soup.
Onions
Frying them to a clear brown builds a deep, sweet savory base for the broth.
Carrots
Release natural sugars during long simmering, adding gentle sweetness and body to the broth.

The step that matters

Boil gently for 5 to 5.5 hours until the rabbit is soft. A gentle simmer lets connective tissue break down slowly, making the meat tender. A hard boil toughens the meat and clouds the broth, so keep it at a slow bubble.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (rabbit, flour, parsley, carrot, bread, rice, mushroom):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Turnipfits better
  3. Leekfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against rabbit, flour, parsley, carrot, bread, rice, mushroom. 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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