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Stewed Rabbit

A stew of rabbit pieces cooked slowly in butter, water, flour, salt, and optional onion.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Stewed Rabbit

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

  1. In a stewpan, melt the butter and brown the rabbit pieces.

  2. Remove the rabbit and add boiling water, flour mixed with cold water, salt, and grated onion to the pan.

  3. Bring the mixture to a boil, then return the rabbit to the pan.

  4. Stew slowly until the rabbit is tender.

  5. 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. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Rabbit + flourtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetaldehyde (pungent, ethereal).

  4. Butter + oniontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Rabbit + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,448 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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 protein, which becomes tender through slow stewing in liquid.
Butter
Adds fat for browning the rabbit pieces and carries flavour into the dish.
Flour
Thickens the cooking liquid into a light gravy as it heats.

The step that matters

Stew slowly until the rabbit is tender. Rabbit is lean and can turn dry and tough if boiled hard. A gentle simmer lets connective tissue break down slowly, keeping the meat moist and tender.

Swap the onion

The recipe marks onion as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (rabbit, butter, flour):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Arrowrootfits better
  3. Chivefits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against rabbit, butter, flour. 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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