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Jugged Rabbit

A rabbit stew cooked with ham, onion, gravy, currant jelly, and lemon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and pepper 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 ↓

Jugged Rabbit

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Joint the rabbit and soak it in salted water for 1 hour.

  2. Wipe the rabbit dry.

  3. Fry the rabbit in dripping with the sliced onion until browned.

Layer and stew

  1. In a tin pail or farina-kettle, layer salt pork and rabbit, sprinkling with pepper and a little salt.

  2. Scatter the fried onion over the rabbit and continue layering until all meat is used.

  3. Pour in the gravy and cover the vessel.

  4. Place the vessel in another pot of cold water.

  5. Gradually bring to a boil and stew for 1 hour or until tender.

Finish the gravy and serve

  1. Arrange the meat on a dish.

  2. Strain the gravy.

  3. Thicken the gravy with browned flour mixed with cold water.

  4. Boil the gravy once. Stir in the jelly and lemon juice. Heat the gravy to boiling.

  5. Pour the gravy over the rabbit.

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. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  2. Rabbit + porktop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together832 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Onion + porktop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,214 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Ham + porktop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,638 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

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 slow stewing in liquid.
Corned ham
Adds salty, savoury flavour that seasons the stew as it cooks.
Gravy
Forms the cooking liquid and gives the stew its body and rich flavour.
Browned flour
Thickens the gravy so it clings to the meat instead of running thin.
Currant jelly
Adds sweetness and fruity depth that balances the savoury gravy.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich, savoury gravy.

The step that matters

Gradually bring to a boil and stew. Heating slowly in a surrounding water bath keeps the liquid gentle, so the meat softens without toughening or drying out.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (rabbit, ham, onion, lemon, pepper, flour, pork):

  1. Limefits better
  2. Avocadofits better
  3. Mangofits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against rabbit, ham, onion, lemon, pepper, flour, pork. 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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