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Rabbit, Stewed

A stew of rabbit, bacon, onions, and herbs simmered in stock or water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and mushroom are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 12,525 recipes. Both carry trans-2-decenal, which smells waxy, orange. The science ↓

Rabbit, Stewed

Ingredients

Directions

Brown the meat and onions

  1. Fry the bacon in butter until yellow, then remove the bacon from the pan.

  2. Add the rabbit pieces and sliced onions to the pan and fry until lightly browned.

  3. Remove the rabbit and onions from the pan.

Make the sauce

  1. Mix flour with the fat in the pan and stir for 2 minutes.

  2. Gradually moisten the flour mixture with stock or water.

  3. Add herbs, pepper, salt, rabbit, bacon, and onions.

Simmer and serve

  1. Simmer gently in a covered saucepan for 20 minutes.

  2. Remove the herbs.

  3. Place the rabbit on a dish and pour the sauce over the rabbit.

  4. If desired, add claret to the sauce.

  5. If desired, stir in boiled mushrooms or mushroom ketchup.

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

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

  2. Onion + mushroomtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,626 recipes

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

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

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

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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 meat, which becomes tender during the long covered simmer.
Streaky bacon
Its fat and savory flavor season the pan and the sauce.
Butter
Carries the frying of bacon, rabbit and onions and adds richness.
Onions
Soften and sweeten during frying and add body to the sauce.
Flour
Mixed with the pan fat, it thickens the stock into a smooth sauce.
Stock or water
Forms the liquid that the flour thickens and the meat gently cooks in.

The step that matters

Cooking the flour in the fat. Stirring the flour in the hot fat for 2 minutes cooks out its raw taste and lets it thicken the liquid smoothly when moistened gradually, rather than forming lumps.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Asparagusfits better
  3. Spinachfits better
  4. Onionthe original

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