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Rabbit Soup a LA Reike

A rabbit soup made with whole rabbits, vegetables, herbs, and cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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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 a LA Reike

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the broth

  1. Wash and soak the rabbits thoroughly.

  2. Place 1 whole rabbit in a soup pot and add 7 pints of cold water or veal broth.

  3. Stew gently for about 45 minutes.

  4. Remove the rabbits, take off the flesh from the backs and a little from the legs, and mince it finely.

  5. Pound the minced meat into a smooth paste and cover it to keep it fresh.

  6. Return the rabbit bodies to the pot along with onions, celery, carrots, savory herbs, mace, peppercorns, and salt.

  7. Stew the mixture gently for 3 hours.

  8. Strain the soup and let it settle, then pour off the clear liquid into a clean pot.

Finish the soup

  1. Gradually mix the hot liquid with the pounded rabbit flesh, adding it slowly to avoid lumps.

  2. Season with pounded mace and cayenne to taste.

  3. Pass the soup through a coarse sieve.

  4. Return the soup to the pot, stir in the cream mixed with arrowroot when boiling, and add salt 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. Celery + arrowroottop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together114 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Carrot + arrowroottop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together164 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Rabbits
Provide the meat that is pounded into a paste to give the soup body and flavour.
Heavy cream
Adds richness and a smooth, velvety mouthfeel to the finished soup.
Arrowroot
Thickens the cream-enriched soup so it becomes smooth and lightly body-rich without lumps.
Onions
Build savoury aromatic flavour in the stock as they stew.

The step that matters

Adding the cream and arrowroot. Arrowroot thickens when heated but can clump if added directly to hot liquid. Mixing it first with cream and stirring it in while the soup is boiling helps it disperse evenly and thicken smoothly.

Swap the mace

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

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

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