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Stewed Rabbit

A rabbit stew with onions, cloves, lemon peel, forcemeat balls, butter, flour, and mushroom ketchup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and mushroom are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 12,525 recipes. Both carry trans-2-decenal, which smells waxy, orange. The science ↓

Stewed Rabbit

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare and stew

  1. Cut the rabbit into small joints.

  2. Place the rabbit in a stewpan with sliced onions, cloves, and minced lemon peel. Add enough water to cover the meat.

  3. When the rabbit is nearly done, add a few forcemeat balls with finely chopped liver.

Finish and serve

  1. Thicken the gravy with butter and flour, then stir in the mushroom ketchup. Bring to a boil and serve.

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. Butter + mushroomtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

  2. Clove + lemontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,150 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Onion + mushroomtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,626 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  4. Clove + mushroomtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,663 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  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
Provides the main meat, which becomes tender through slow stewing in liquid.
Butter and flour
Together they form a roux that thickens the gravy and gives it body.
Mushroom ketchup
Adds savoury, umami depth to the gravy.
Onions
Soften during stewing and add sweetness and aroma to the broth.

The step that matters

Thicken the gravy with butter and flour. Flour must be cooked in fat and whisked into liquid to avoid lumps and raw starch taste. Adding the mushroom ketchup after thickening keeps its flavour fresh.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (rabbit, onion, clove, butter, flour, mushroom, ketchup):

  1. Lemonthe original
  2. Avocadofits about as well
  3. Coconutfits about as well
  4. Applefits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against rabbit, onion, clove, butter, flour, mushroom, ketchup. 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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