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Stewed Rabbits

A stew made from rabbit pieces simmered in water with salt, pepper, flour, butter, and optional lemon juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Stewed Rabbits

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Skin and clean the rabbits, then cut them into small pieces.

  2. Soak the rabbit pieces in salted cold water for 1 hour.

Cook

  1. Place the rabbit in a stew kettle and cover with cold water.

  2. Boil until the rabbit is tender.

  3. Season with salt and pepper.

Thicken and serve

  1. In a bowl, mix the flour and butter until smooth, then stir into the gravy.

  2. Add a little lemon juice for extra flavor.

  3. Serve on a platter.

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 + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: acetaldehyde (pungent, ethereal).

  4. Rabbit + lemontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together626 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).

Flour and butter 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 through long moist simmering.
Flour
Thickens the cooking liquid into a smooth gravy.
Butter
Adds richness and helps the flour blend smoothly into the gravy.

The step that matters

Boil until the rabbit is tender. Rabbit is lean and can turn tough or dry if undercooked, while overcooking makes it stringy. Cooking gently in liquid until a fork slides in easily gives the meat a tender texture.

“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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