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Rabbit, Jugged

A rabbit dish cooked with butter, onions, claret, stock, peppercorns, and thickened with flour and red currant jelly.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 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 ↓

Rabbit, Jugged

Ingredients

Directions

Brown the rabbit and onions

  1. Melt the butter in a pan.

  2. Fry the rabbit joints and onions together for 6-7 minutes.

  3. Transfer the rabbit and onions to a jar.

Bake in the jar

  1. Add claret, stock, peppercorns, and salt to the jar.

  2. Tie the jar tightly and bake for 2 hours.

Make the gravy and serve

  1. Strain the gravy into a saucepan.

  2. Mix flour with cold stock or water and add to the gravy.

  3. Stir in red currant jelly and cook until thickened.

  4. Arrange rabbit pieces on a hot dish and pour gravy over them.

  5. Serve with hot forcemeat balls and extra gravy in a sauce-boat.

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. Butter + rabbittop 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 meat that becomes tender during the long, slow braise in the jar.
Onions
Soften and sweeten as they cook, adding savoury depth to the gravy.
Claret
Adds acidity and wine flavour that helps balance the rich meat and gravy.
Flour
Thickens the strained liquid into a smooth gravy as it cooks.
Red currant jelly
Adds sweetness and a fruity tang that balances the savoury gravy.

The step that matters

Tie the jar tightly. A tight seal keeps steam and liquid inside so the rabbit cooks gently in its own juices instead of drying out over the two-hour bake.

Swap the red currant

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

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Coconutfits better
  3. Avocadofits better
  4. Red currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, rabbit, onion, 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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