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Stewed Rabbit

A stew of rabbit pieces simmered with butter, water, celery, onion, and optional curry powder.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and celery match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 16,012 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Stewed Rabbit

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Skin and clean the rabbit, then cut it into pieces.

Make the stew

  1. In a stew pan, melt the butter and add the boiling water and rabbit pieces along with the chopped celery.

  2. Cook until the rabbit is tender.

  3. In a bowl, mix the flour with a little cold milk to make a paste, then add this to the stew along with the grated onion half an hour before serving.

  4. Season with salt, pepper, and optional curry powder, then let it boil well and serve hot.

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. Pepper + celerytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  4. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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
Lean meat that becomes tender and soft during the long, slow simmer.
Butter
Fat that adds richness and carries flavor through the stew.
Flour
Starch from the flour thickens the cooking liquid into a smooth gravy.
Celery
Adds a fresh, savory aroma as it softens in the broth.
Cream or milk
Adds richness and a silky texture to the finished stew.
Grated onion
Releases aromatic flavor that mellows during the simmer.

The step that matters

Mixing the flour paste. Mixing the flour with cold milk into a smooth paste before adding it to the hot stew prevents lumps, and simmering the stew afterward fully cooks the flour so it thickens and loses its raw taste.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (rabbit, butter, flour, pepper, celery, cream):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against rabbit, butter, flour, pepper, celery, 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.

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