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Brown Stew Rabbit

A rabbit stew with onion, bacon, cloves, and a butter‑flour gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,451 recipes. Both carry ethyl octanoate, which smells fruity, wine. The science ↓

Brown Stew Rabbit

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Slice the onion and fry it in half of the butter or dripping.

  2. Place the fried onion in a stewpan with the water or stock and add the cloves.

  3. Clean, wash, and cut the rabbit into pieces.

Brown and stew

  1. Roll the rabbit pieces in flour and fry them in the remaining butter or dripping.

  2. Add the rabbit and seasoning to the hot stock and simmer until tender.

Finish and serve

  1. Remove the rabbit pieces and thicken the gravy.

  2. Strain the gravy over the rabbit and arrange the bacon around the dish.

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 + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Onion + clovetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,901 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

  5. Rabbit + oniontop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,292 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
Forms the main body of the dish and becomes tender through slow simmering.
Flour
Coats the rabbit so it browns and thickens the gravy.
Butter or dripping
Fat for frying the onion and rabbit, adding browning and richness.
Onion
Adds savoury sweetness and aroma to the stock.
Bacon
Adds smoky, salty fat flavour to the finished dish.

The step that matters

Browning the floured rabbit. Frying the flour-coated rabbit in fat until golden builds browned flavour through the Maillard reaction and helps the flour form a base for thickening the gravy. Pale or greasy frying weakens both flavour and body.

Swap the clove

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

  1. Garlicfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Parsleyfits better
  4. Clovethe original

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