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Stewed Rabbit or Hare Au Chasseur

A stew of rabbit or hare cooked with sherry, water, flour, onion, butter, spices, and small white onions.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and allspice match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,874 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Stewed Rabbit or Hare Au Chasseur

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare and brown

  1. Skin and clean the rabbit, wiping it with a damp cloth. Leave it whole or disjoint it as preferred.

  2. Melt 1 tablespoon of butter in a large frying pan. Brown the rabbit on all sides, then transfer it to a preheated iron pot.

  3. In the same pan, fry the onion until browned but not burned, then add it to the pot.

  4. In the frying pan, add the remaining butter and flour, stirring until browned. Gradually add 1 pint of boiling water, stirring continuously.

Braise and finish

  1. Pour the mixture over the rabbit and add enough boiling water to half cover it. Add all other seasonings, cover tightly, and simmer gently for 45 minutes to 1 hour.

  2. Meanwhile, peel the small onions and boil them in salted water for about 1 hour until tender. Drain them.

  3. Remove the rabbit from the pot and arrange it on a hot dish. Strain the gravy, return it to the heat, and boil down briskly for a few minutes.

  4. Arrange the boiled onions around the rabbit before serving.

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. Clove + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Sherry + vinegartop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together660 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-ethyl-2-methoxyphenol (smoky, clove).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + allspicetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,302 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

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 or hare
Provides the main meat, which becomes tender through long, gentle simmering.
Flour
Browned with butter to make a roux that thickens the gravy.
Butter
Adds fat for browning the meat and onion and enriches the sauce.
Sherry
Adds acidity and depth of flavour to the braising liquid and gravy.
Onion
Browns to add sweetness and savoury depth to the sauce.
Small white onions
Cooked separately until tender and served alongside as a mild, sweet garnish.

The step that matters

Browning the flour in butter. Cooking the flour until it turns golden develops a nutty flavour and removes raw starch taste, while stirring prevents scorching. Scorched flour turns bitter and dark.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (rabbit, sherry, flour, butter, clove, allspice, vinegar):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Mustardfits better
  3. Arrowrootfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against rabbit, sherry, flour, butter, clove, allspice, vinegar. 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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