Skip to main content
Main

Modern Cookery

A rabbit soup simmered with onions, celery, carrots, herbs, mace, peppercorns, salt, and finished with cream and arrow-root.

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 ↓

Modern Cookery

Ingredients

Directions

Make the broth

  1. Prepare the rabbits and place them in a large pot with water or veal broth.

  2. Add onions, celery, carrots, savory herbs, mace, white peppercorns, and salt.

  3. Simmer for four hours.

  4. Strain the soup through a coarse sieve back into the pot.

Finish the soup

  1. Stir in the cream mixed with arrow-root when the soup boils.

  2. Adjust seasoning with salt, mace, and cayenne if needed.

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

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

  3. Onion + celerytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,518 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

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

  5. Rabbit + oniontop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,292 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Rabbits
Provide the main meat and flavour of the soup as they simmer slowly.
Pounded rabbit flesh
Thickens the soup and gives it a smooth, rich body.
Cream
Adds richness and a silky texture to the finished soup.
Arrow-root
Thickens the cream so it blends smoothly into the hot soup.

The step that matters

Stir in the cream mixed with arrow-root when the soup boils. Arrow-root thickens when heated, but cream can curdle if it is added to a violently boiling liquid. Mixing the cream with the starch first and adding it as the soup boils, rather than before, helps keep it smooth and evenly thickened.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (rabbit, veal, onion, celery, carrot, cream):

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Tarragonfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against rabbit, veal, onion, celery, carrot, cream. 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

Carrot SoupCarrot Soup134 recipesCream of Celery SoupCream of Celery Soup113 recipesVeal PattiesVeal Patties50 recipesCelery StewCelery Stew25 recipes