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Spiced Rabbit

A rabbit stew flavored with salt, vinegar, butter, onion, bay leaf, peppercorns, celery root, and thickened with flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and celery are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 18,518 recipes. Both carry guaiacol, which smells smoky, sweet. The science ↓

Spiced Rabbit

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut up the rabbit after cleaning it thoroughly and soaking it in salt water for 1 hour.

  2. Pour vinegar over the rabbit and let it marinate overnight.

Make the stew

  1. In a deep stew pan, melt the butter and sauté the chopped onion.

  2. Add the bay leaf, peppercorns, and celery root to the pan.

  3. Place the rabbit in the stew, adding some of the vinegar from the marinade and a little salt.

  4. Cook until the rabbit is tender, then thicken the sauce with browned flour mixed with butter.

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. Onion + celerytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,518 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  2. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Rabbit + oniontop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,292 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

    Shared aroma: acetaldehyde (pungent, ethereal).

  5. Vinegar + oniontop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,226 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

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

Rabbit
Forms the main body of the stew, becoming tender with slow cooking.
Vinegar
Acidity from the marinade helps tenderise the rabbit meat and brightens the stew.
Butter
Fat that carries the sautéed onion and enriches the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the sauce as it cooks with the butter.

The step that matters

Cook until the rabbit is tender, then thicken the sauce. Rabbit is lean and needs long, gentle cooking so connective tissue softens; thickening with flour and butter works best once the liquid is simmering so the starch can swell evenly.

Swap the celery

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (rabbit, vinegar, egg, butter, onion, flour):

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Garlicfits better
  3. Tarragonfits better
  4. Celerythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against rabbit, vinegar, egg, butter, onion, flour. 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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