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Rabbit

A rabbit soup made with stock, butter, flour, milk, cream, egg yolks, and small egg-balls.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Rabbit

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the stock

  1. Remove the gills from the rabbit, wash, dry, and joint it.

  2. Place the rabbit in a saucepan with water and salt; bring to a boil and skim.

  3. Add the onion, celery, peppercorns, and mace; simmer for 2-3 hours.

  4. Strain the stock.

Make the soup

  1. Melt the butter in a pan.

  2. Add the flour to the melted butter and fry for a moment.

  3. Gradually add the stock to the pan and cook for 5 minutes.

  4. Beat the yolk of the egg.

  5. Mix the beaten yolk with the milk and cream.

  6. Strain the mixture into the soup.

  7. Stir the soup over gentle heat until the egg is cooked.

Make and add the egg-balls

  1. Break the hard-boiled yolks smooth.

  2. Season the broken yolks.

  3. Bind the seasoned yolks with a little raw yolk.

  4. Form the mixture into small balls.

  5. Drop the egg-balls into the soup.

  6. Cook the egg-balls gently for a few seconds.

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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  4. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Rabbit
Provides the meat and flavour that the stock is built on.
Butter
Melted with flour to form a roux that thickens the soup.
Flour
Cooked in butter to make a roux that thickens the stock.
Milk
Adds moisture and softness to the enriched soup base.
Cream
Adds richness and body to the enriched soup base.
Egg yolks
Enrich and thicken the soup and bind the egg-balls together.

The step that matters

Stir the soup over gentle heat until the egg is cooked. Egg yolk thickens when heated but scrambles if the soup boils. Gentle heat lets it set smoothly into a silky texture rather than curdling.

Swap the mace

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against rabbit, onion, celery, butter, flour, milk, cream. 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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