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Ragout of Rabbits

A savory rabbit stew with onions, pork, lemon, sherry, and browned flour.

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

Ragout of Rabbits

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce base

  1. Dredge the sliced onion with flour and fry in butter until browned.

  2. Add ½ cup of gravy and mix well, then transfer to a saucepan.

Stew and serve

  1. Add the jointed rabbits, sliced pork, and lemon to the saucepan.

  2. Season with salt and pepper, cover, and stew for 1 hour or until the meat is tender.

  3. Thicken the sauce with browned flour, bring to a boil, and serve.

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Pork + oniontop 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. 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

Rabbits
Provide the main meat, which becomes tender during slow stewing.
Fat salt pork
Adds fat and savory flavor that enriches the sauce and meat.
Onion
Browning in butter builds sweetness and savory depth in the sauce.
Browned flour
Thickens the sauce and adds a toasted, nutty flavor.
Butter
Fat for frying the onion, promoting browning and rich flavor.
Lemon
Adds acidity and bright citrus aroma that balances the rich sauce.

The step that matters

Stew until the meat is tender. Rabbit is lean and its connective tissue needs long, gentle, moist heat to soften. Stewing covered at a low simmer breaks it down gradually; boiling hard or stopping early leaves the meat tough and dry.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Lemonthe original
  2. Mangofits about as well
  3. Coconutfits about as well
  4. Avocadofits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against rabbit, pork, onion, butter, flour, pepper, sherry. 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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