Skip to main content
Main

Rabbit Broth

A clear broth made with rabbit, butter, flour, tomato puree, stock, lemon juice, sugar, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Tomato and lemon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,592 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Rabbit Broth

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the rabbit

  1. Cook the rabbit in a pot with a close-fitting lid until tender.

  2. Remove the rabbit and keep it warm.

Make the sauce

  1. In another pan, heat the butter and fry the flour slowly until it turns nut-brown.

  2. Stir in the tomato puree.

  3. Strain and add ½ pint of stock to the flour and butter mixture.

  4. Stir until boiling, then season with salt, sugar, and lemon juice.

Finish and serve

  1. Add the rabbit back to the pot, heat thoroughly, and serve.

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. Tomato + lemontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,592 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Rabbit + flourtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetaldehyde (pungent, ethereal).

  4. Rabbit + lemontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together626 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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 main meat, which becomes tender through slow, covered cooking.
Butter
Carries the flour's browning and adds richness to the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the stock and, when fried to nut-brown, adds toasty flavour and colour.
Tomato puree
Adds concentrated tomato flavour, acidity and colour to the broth.
Rabbit stock
Forms the liquid base that the flour and butter thicken into a broth.

The step that matters

Frying the flour until nut-brown. Flour cooked slowly in butter turns from pale to nut-brown, developing toasty flavour and colour. Cooking it too fast can scorch it, giving a bitter taste, or leave it pale and raw-tasting. Stirring steadily and watching the colour keeps the browning even.

Swap the tomato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (rabbit, butter, flour, lemon, sugar):

  1. Arrowrootfits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Leekfits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against rabbit, butter, flour, lemon, sugar. 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.

You might also like

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesLemon SauceLemon Sauce236 recipesCream of Tomato SoupCream of Tomato Soup107 recipesTomato BisqueTomato Bisque61 recipes