Skip to main content
Main

Rabbit Soup

A hearty soup made with rabbits, beef stock, vegetables, herbs, spices, port wine, mushroom ketchup, and fried bread.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Celery and carrot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,173 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Rabbit Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare and simmer

  1. Cut up the rabbits, keeping the livers apart.

  2. Fry the joints and place them in a stewpan with the livers.

  3. Pour over the beef stock and simmer for 2 hours, skimming off the scum.

  4. Remove the backs of the rabbits, cut off the meat, and return the bones to the pot.

  5. Add the eschalot, onion, sweet herbs, celery, carrots, salt, and Cayenne.

  6. Stew for another hour.

Finish and serve

  1. Strain the soup, rub the liver through a sieve, and heat the soup again.

  2. Add the port wine and mushroom ketchup, and serve with fried bread sippets and diced rabbit meat.

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. Celery + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Beef + mushroomtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,232 recipes

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

  3. Celery + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

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

  4. Carrot + peppertop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,555 recipes

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

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Rabbits
Provide the meat and bones that give the soup its body and savoury flavour.
Beef stock
Forms the liquid base that carries the flavour of the rabbit and vegetables.
Liver (in the method)
Rubbed through a sieve, it thickens the soup and adds a rich, deep flavour.
Celery
Contributes aromatic, savoury flavour as it simmers into the stock.
Port wine
Adds sweetness and depth of flavour at the end of cooking.
Mushroom ketchup
Adds concentrated savoury, umami flavour to the finished soup.

The step that matters

Skimming during the first simmer. Scum rises from the meat and bones as the stock simmers; removing it keeps the soup clear and free of bitter, muddy flavours.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (rabbit, beef, celery, carrot, pepper, port wine, mushroom):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Turnipfits about as well
  3. Shallotfits about as well
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against rabbit, beef, celery, carrot, pepper, port wine, 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.

More rabbit soup recipes

Brown 10Curry 4 See all 103 →

You might also like

Brown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesRoast BeefRoast Beef211 recipesBeef LoafBeef Loaf175 recipesCarrot SoupCarrot Soup134 recipes