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Stewed Rabbits

A rabbit stew made with water, onion, celery, mace, butter, flour, salt, and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Celery and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 16,012 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Stewed Rabbits

Ingredients

Directions

Stew the rabbit

  1. Place the quartered rabbit in a stew pan and cover with water.

  2. Add the sliced onion, chopped celery, and mace.

  3. Stew until the rabbit is tender.

Thicken and serve

  1. In a separate bowl, mix the butter and flour to create a paste.

  2. Stir the paste into the stew to thicken.

  3. Season with salt and pepper, then 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. Celery + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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
Provides the meat that becomes tender through slow, moist stewing.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, carrying flavour through the stew.
Flour
Mixed with butter to form a paste that thickens the cooking liquid.
Onion
Adds aromatic sweetness and savoury depth to the stew liquid.
Celery
Contributes a mild, savoury aroma to the stewing liquid.

The step that matters

Stirring the butter-flour paste into the stew. Flour thickens liquid only when it is well dispersed and heated. Mixing it into a paste first prevents lumps, and the stew must keep simmering so the starch swells and thickens fully.

Swap the mace

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

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

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