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Rabbit, a LA Chasseur

A rabbit dish cooked with clarified butter, herbs, Espagnole sauce, and garnished with croutons.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and shallot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,737 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Rabbit, a LA Chasseur

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the rabbit

  1. Remove hind legs and shoulders.

  2. Split the head.

  3. Divide the loins into six pieces.

  4. Trim the pieces neatly.

Brown and braise

  1. Place them in a sauté pan with clarified butter, pepper, and salt.

  2. Brown the rabbit over medium heat.

  3. Add the chopped fine herbs.

  4. Cover and cook over low heat for 10 minutes.

  5. Pour off excess grease.

Make the sauce and serve

  1. Add Espagnole sauce, mushrooms, truffles, quenelles, glaze, nutmeg, and lemon juice. Simmer for 3 minutes.

  2. Arrange the rabbit pieces on a serving dish.

  3. Top with the ragout. Pour sauce over.

  4. Garnish with croutons.

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 + shallottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,737 recipes

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

  2. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Mushroom + shallottop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,982 recipes

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

  4. Mushroom + truffletop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,900 recipes

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

  5. Butter + mushroomtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

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

What each ingredient does

Rabbit
Provides the main meat, which browns and becomes tender during gentle covered cooking.
Clarified butter
Conducts heat for browning the rabbit and adds rich, nutty fat to the dish.
Espagnole sauce
Forms the body of the sauce, giving it thickness and a deep savoury flavour.
Quenelles of rabbit
Add tender, delicate meat texture to the ragout.
Glaze
Adds concentrated savoury flavour and gloss to the sauce.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich sauce and balances its fat.

The step that matters

Browning the rabbit over medium heat. Browning builds the Maillard flavours that the sauce later rests on. Pieces that are crowded or wet steam instead of browning, so they turn grey and taste flat.

Swap the parsley

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (rabbit, butter, pepper, mushroom, truffle, shallot, sauce):

  1. Capersfits about as well
  2. Thymefits about as well
  3. Tarragonfits about as well
  4. Parsleythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against rabbit, butter, pepper, mushroom, truffle, shallot, sauce. 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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