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Puree of Chicken, Pheasant, or Rabbit a LA Reine

A creamy puree of chicken, pheasant, or rabbit with vegetables and cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and celery 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 ↓

Puree of Chicken, Pheasant, or Rabbit a LA Reine

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the meat

  1. Wash and clean the rabbits or hen thoroughly.

  2. Stew the meat in 3 pints of White Stock for 1 hour.

  3. Remove the meat.

  4. Pound the meat with 2 ounces of butter in a mortar.

  5. Rub the mixture through a wire sieve with some of the stock.

Make the puree

  1. Return the carcass to the stock.

  2. Add the sliced vegetables and salt.

  3. Let it stew for 2 hours.

  4. Strain the stock.

  5. Beat the vegetables through a hair sieve, discarding the turnips and carrots.

  6. Incorporate the meat puree into the stock gradually.

  7. Add 1 pint of cream and 1 teaspoon of sugar.

  8. Adjust salt to taste.

Serve

  1. Serve with fried 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. Carrot + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Celery + turniptop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Turnip + oniontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Carrot + oniontop 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 or hen
Provide the meat that is pounded and sieved to give the puree its body.
Butter
Enriches the pounded meat, adding fat for a smoother, silkier texture.
Carrots, celery, turnip and onions
Flavour the stock, and their pulp thickens the puree when beaten through a sieve.
Cream
Adds richness and fat, giving the finished puree a smooth, velvety texture.
Sugar
Adds a small amount of sweetness that rounds out the savoury flavour.

The step that matters

Incorporating the meat puree into the stock gradually. Adding the puree slowly and stirring it in keeps it evenly dispersed, so the soup becomes smooth rather than lumpy.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (rabbit, butter, carrot, celery, turnip, cream, sugar):

  1. Leekfits better
  2. Parsnipfits better
  3. Mustardfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against rabbit, butter, carrot, celery, turnip, cream, 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.

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