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Rabbit Soup

A hearty soup made with rabbit, pickled pork, onions, turnip, and thickened with cornflour or oatmeal.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and turnip match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,585 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Rabbit Soup

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no cooking times; the times in the steps were added in transcription, so check for doneness rather than trusting the clock.

Make the broth

  1. Cut the rabbit into pieces and place it in a large pot.

  2. Add the pickled pork, onions, turnip, and water.

  3. Bring to a boil, then reduce heat and simmer for 1.5 to 2 hours.

Finish the soup

  1. Remove the meat and strain the broth.

  2. Thicken the broth with cornflour or oatmeal, stirring until smooth.

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. Onion + turniptop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Rabbit + porktop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together832 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Pork + oniontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,214 recipes

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

  4. Rabbit + turniptop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together117 recipes

    Shared aroma: geraniol (rose, geranium).

  5. Pork + turniptop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,358 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyraldehyde (malty, chocolate).

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 and flavour that the broth is built around.
Pickled pork
Adds salty, savoury depth to the broth as it simmers.
Onions
Release sweetness and aroma as they cook slowly into the broth.
Cornflour or oatmeal
Starch that swells when heated, thickening the broth to a smooth body.

The step that matters

Thickening the broth with cornflour or oatmeal. Starch must be stirred into the hot broth so it disperses evenly; added to a cold liquid or left unstirred, it clumps and leaves lumps instead of a smooth, thickened soup.

Swap the turnip

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (rabbit, pork, onion):

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Mustardfits better
  3. Turnipthe original
  4. Chivefits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against rabbit, pork, onion. 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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