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Rabbit A-LA-francaise

A rabbit stew cooked with salt, pepper, mace, flour, butter, and port wine.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Rabbit A-LA-francaise

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare and cook

  1. Season the rabbit pieces with salt, pepper, and mace.

  2. Cover the rabbit with water and cook until tender.

Finish the gravy

  1. Mix flour with butter to create a paste.

  2. Add the paste to the pot when the gravy is thick.

  3. Stir in the port wine and heat through.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Butter + port winetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,499 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

    Shared aroma: acetaldehyde (pungent, ethereal).

  4. Mace + port winetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together695 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

  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
Forms the main body of the dish, becoming tender through slow simmering in liquid.
Flour
Thickens the cooking liquid into a gravy as it cooks with the butter.
Butter
Combines with the flour into a paste that enriches the gravy and adds richness.
Port wine
Adds sweetness and depth of flavour to the gravy as it heats through.

The step that matters

Adding the flour and butter paste. The paste must be added when the gravy is already thick, and stirred in well. Flour added to hot liquid without being blended with butter first can form lumps, and adding it too early or too late changes the final thickness of the gravy.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Nutmegfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against rabbit, pepper, flour, butter, port wine. 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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