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Brown Rabbit Soup

A hearty 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) · 10 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

  1. Flour and fry the rabbit joints lightly.

  2. Add the fried onions and pour in the boiling water.

  3. Stir in the salt, skimming off any scum that rises.

  4. Add the parsley, carrots, and peppercorns.

Cook and serve

  1. Boil gently for 5 to 5.5 hours.

  2. Strain the soup and let it cool to skim off the fat.

  3. Reheat the soup and 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. Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

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

  5. Onion + ricetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,433 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 and body that give the soup its main flavour and richness.
Flour
Coats the rabbit joints so they brown lightly and help thicken the soup.
Onions
Fried to a clear brown, they add sweetness and savoury depth to the broth.
Carrots
Add natural sweetness and body to the broth as they cook for hours.

The step that matters

Skimming the scum. Scum that rises early in the boil is impurities and proteins; removing it keeps the broth clear and clean-tasting. Skimming the cooled soup removes the fat that solidifies on top.

Swap the onion

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

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

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