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Stewed Rabbits

A slow-cooked rabbit stew with butter, flour, onions, herbs, and optional ham, thickened with milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 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 Rabbits

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Brown the rabbit joints in butter and flour in a large pot.

  2. Add water, minced onion, pepper, salt, and sweet herbs if desired.

  3. Stew for 2 hours until the rabbits are tender.

  4. Thicken the gravy with butter, flour, and milk.

  5. Add ham slices for extra flavor if desired.

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

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

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

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

  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
Provides the meat that becomes tender during long, slow stewing.
Flour
Coats the rabbit for browning and later thickens the gravy as a starch.
Butter
Adds fat for browning the rabbit and enriches the gravy.
Onion
Adds savory sweetness and aroma that flavours the stewing liquid.
Milk
Adds creaminess and body to the thickened gravy.

The step that matters

Stew for 2 hours until the rabbits are tender. Rabbit is lean and its connective tissue needs long, gentle simmering to soften. Cooking too hot or too briefly leaves the meat tough, so test for tenderness rather than relying only on the clock.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against rabbit, butter, flour, pepper, parsley, milk, ham. 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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