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Rabbit in a Mortar with the White Sauce

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and spinach are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,400 recipes. Both carry nonanal, which smells fat, citrus. The science ↓

Rabbit in a Mortar with the White Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Remove the gills from the rabbit and blend it with the white sauce until smooth, adding the sauce gradually.

  2. Season with pepper and salt, then mix in the wine and rub through a fine sieve.

  3. In a cool place, stir in the aspic until nearly set, then fold in the whipped cream.

  4. Mix a quarter of the mixture with spinach or asparagus puree and place it in each half of the mold to form the tops.

  5. Fill the rest of the mold with the white puree mixed with the asparagus puree, close the mold, wrap in paper, and chill on ice for about 1.5 hours.

  6. Immerse the mold in tepid water, turn out onto a dish with a folded napkin.

  7. Decorate with cooked prawns and diamonds of set aspic jelly, and serve as a cold entree.

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. Pepper + spinachtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  2. Sauce + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,787 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

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

  4. Rabbit + spinachtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together24 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  5. Rabbit + saucetop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together330 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

Swap the spinach

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (rabbit, sauce, pepper, wine, cream):

  1. Capsicumfits about as well
  2. Mustardfits about as well
  3. Shallotfits about as well
  4. Spinachthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against rabbit, sauce, pepper, wine, cream. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

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