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Stewed Rabbit

A rabbit stew cooked with lard, onion, flour, spices, parsley, bay leaves, and claret.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and allspice match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,874 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Stewed Rabbit

Ingredients

Directions

Brown the rabbit

  1. Heat a large flat stewpan and add the lard.

  2. Add the rabbit joints so they touch the bottom of the pan.

  3. Sprinkle the joints with sliced onion and flour, browning both sides.

Stew

  1. Pour in boiling water or stock, and season with salt, pepper, cloves, allspice, parsley, and bay leaves.

  2. Simmer slowly for 1.5 hours, then add claret and simmer for another hour.

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. Clove + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  3. Allspice + parsleytop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,289 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Pepper + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  5. Pepper + allspicetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,395 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

What each ingredient does

Rabbit
Provides the meat that becomes tender during the long, slow simmer.
Flour
Browns on the joints and thickens the cooking liquid into a sauce.
Lard
Fat for frying the joints, helping them brown evenly before stewing.
Claret
Adds acidity and wine flavour to the sauce when added late in cooking.
Onion
Softens during stewing and adds sweetness and savoury depth to the sauce.

The step that matters

Browning the joints in the lard. Searing the floured rabbit until golden builds browned flavour through the Maillard reaction, which gives the stew depth. Pale joints give a flatter, greyer result.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (rabbit, walnut, flour, pepper, clove, allspice, parsley):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Carrotfits better
  3. Parsnipfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against rabbit, walnut, flour, pepper, clove, allspice, parsley. 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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