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Stewed Rabbit

A rabbit stew made with water, Port wine, mace, flour, butter, milk, onion, parsley, and pork or bacon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Rabbit and pork work together. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 832 recipes. Both carry decanal, which smells soap, orange peel. The science ↓

Stewed Rabbit

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wash the rabbit pieces and season with salt and pepper.

  2. Place the rabbit in a stewpan and add ½ cup of water.

  3. When the water has nearly evaporated, add ½ cup of Port wine, mace, and a mixture of flour and butter.

Stew and finish

  1. Let it stew gently until the rabbit is tender.

  2. For an alternative method, soak the rabbit in salt water, then add it to a stewpan with pork or bacon and enough water to cover.

  3. Once nearly done, remove the rabbit, strain the water, and return it to the stewpan with milk, pepper, salt, onion, and parsley.

  4. Bring to a boil, then stir in butter mixed with flour, boil again, 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. Rabbit + porktop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together832 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  2. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  3. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Pork + milktop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,386 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-heptenal (creamy, biscuit).

  5. Port wine + buttertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,499 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

Flour and butter 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
Forms the main body of the stew and becomes tender through slow, gentle cooking.
Flour
Mixed with butter and stirred in to thicken the cooking liquid into a stew.
Butter
Adds richness and body, and helps bind the flour into the thickened sauce.
Port wine
Adds depth and a sweet, fruity flavour to the stewing liquid.
Milk
Adds creaminess and softens the flavour of the finished sauce.

The step that matters

Stirring in the flour and butter. Flour added to hot liquid can clump if not mixed with butter first and stirred well. Boiling after adding it lets the starch swell fully, which thickens the sauce smoothly.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (rabbit, port wine, flour, butter, pepper, pork, milk):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Sagefits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against rabbit, port wine, flour, butter, pepper, pork, milk. 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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