Skip to main content
Main

Rabbits, Giblottes of

A rabbit stew cooked with bacon, mushrooms, veal gravy, and herbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Parsley and thyme match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,057 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Rabbits, Giblottes of

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the rabbit and bacon

  1. Skin and cut the rabbits into pieces.

  2. Blanch the bacon pieces in boiling water.

  3. Fry the bacon pieces in butter until light brown.

  4. Remove the bacon.

  5. Add the rabbit pieces to the stewpan and cook until firm.

Make the sauce and stew

  1. Stir in flour and let it brown slightly.

  2. Moisten with veal gravy.

  3. Boil the sauce to check thickness.

  4. Add the rabbit, bacon, parsley, green onions, thyme, bay leaf, and clove.

  5. Simmer for an hour, skimming off fat.

  6. Transfer the meat to a clean stewpan.

  7. Strain the sauce through a tamis.

Finish and serve

  1. Fry the mushrooms and small onions in butter until white.

  2. Add mushrooms and onions to the sauce.

  3. Boil for 15 minutes.

  4. Serve the rabbit pieces, topped with onions, bacon, and mushrooms, and cover with reduced sauce.

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. Parsley + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Thyme + clovetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,108 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  3. Parsley + clovetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,768 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  4. Onion + thymetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,171 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Parsley + oniontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 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

Rabbits
Provide the main meat, which becomes tender during the long simmer in the sauce.
Bacon
Adds salty, smoky fat and savoury flavour to the sauce and the finished dish.
Butter
Fat for frying that browns the bacon, mushrooms and onions and adds richness.
Flour
Browned in the fat to form a roux that thickens the sauce.
Veal gravy
Liquid base that becomes the body and savoury depth of the sauce.
Button mushrooms
Add earthy flavour and a tender texture to the finished dish.

The step that matters

Frying the flour until it browns slightly. Cooking flour in fat drives off raw starch taste and builds nutty colour and flavour. Stopping too early leaves the sauce pasty, while overcooking it darkens the sauce and weakens its thickening power.

Swap the clove

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

  1. Marjoramfits better
  2. Sagefits better
  3. Capersfits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against rabbit, butter, flour, veal, parsley, onion, thyme. 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.

You might also like

Mushroom SoupMushroom Soup60 recipesVeal PattiesVeal Patties50 recipesBeef, Mutton, or Veal BrothBeef, Mutton, or Veal Broth6 recipesRabbit PattiesRabbit Patties6 recipes