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Stewed Rabbit

A rabbit stew made with salt, lard, flour, water, bay leaf, onion, pepper, and parsley garnish.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Stewed Rabbit

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare and brown

  1. Cut up the rabbit and season with salt.

  2. Roll the rabbit pieces in flour and fry until brown.

Stew

  1. Place the rabbit in a stew pan with bay leaf and onion.

  2. Add salt, pepper, and cover with water.

  3. Cover the pan and let it simmer for 1 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. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  2. Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Flour + parsleytop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,675 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Rabbit + oniontop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,292 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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, gentle simmer.
Flour
Coats the pieces so they brown in the fat and help thicken the stewing liquid.
Lard or bacon drippings
Fat for frying that browns the floured rabbit and adds savoury flavour.
Water
Forms the stewing liquid that gently cooks the rabbit and keeps it moist.

The step that matters

Frying the floured rabbit until brown. Browning the flour-coated pieces in hot fat builds flavour through the Maillard reaction. Pale pieces give a flat, under-flavoured stew.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against rabbit, flour, pepper, 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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