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Rabbit

A quick rabbit stew cooked in butter, stock, and seasonings, finished with flour and optional sherry.

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 ↓

Rabbit

Ingredients

Directions

Braise the rabbit

  1. Melt the butter in a stewpan.

  2. Add the rabbit pieces and brown them lightly on all sides.

  3. Pour in enough stock or water to cover the rabbit.

  4. Season with salt, pepper, mace, parsley, and mushrooms if using.

  5. Simmer gently until the rabbit is cooked through.

Finish and serve

  1. Ten minutes before finishing, thicken the gravy with flour.

  2. Serve hot, adding sherry to the sauce 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. Mushroom + sherrytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,176 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methoxy-4-methylphenol (smoky, clove).

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

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

  4. Pepper + mushroomtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,580 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Parsley + mushroomtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,132 recipes

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

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 as it simmers slowly in liquid.
Butter
Adds fat for browning the rabbit and gives the finished sauce a rich flavour.
Flour
Thickens the cooking liquid into a gravy as it heats.
Mushrooms
Add earthy flavour and moisture to the sauce while it simmers.

The step that matters

Brown the rabbit lightly on all sides. Browning creates savoury flavour through the Maillard reaction. Pale pieces added to the liquid give a bland, washed-out gravy, so the surfaces need to colour before the stock goes in.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Marjoramfits better
  3. Tarragonfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against rabbit, butter, pepper, parsley, mushroom, flour, sherry. 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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