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French Stewed Rabbit

A stew of rabbit pieces cooked with salt, pepper, mace, allspice, butter, flour, and claret wine.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and allspice match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,395 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

French Stewed Rabbit

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wash the rabbit pieces and place them in a stew pan.

  2. Season with salt, pepper, mace, and allspice.

  3. Add enough water to prevent sticking and cover tightly.

Stew and finish

  1. Stew slowly until the rabbit is about half cooked.

  2. Incorporate the butter rolled in flour and the claret wine.

  3. Adjust seasoning with more salt, pepper, or spice if needed.

  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. Pepper + allspicetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,395 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Mace + allspicetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Allspice + flourtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,302 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: acetaldehyde (pungent, ethereal).

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 during slow, covered stewing.
Butter
Adds richness and body to the sauce as it melts into the liquid.
All-purpose flour
Thickens the cooking liquid when rolled into the butter and stirred in.
Claret wine
Adds acidity and flavor to the stew and helps build the sauce.

The step that matters

Stew slowly until the rabbit is about half cooked. Covered, gentle heat keeps the lean meat moist and tender. Water is added to prevent sticking, so the pan must be watched to avoid scorching or drying before the wine and flour are added.

Swap the mace

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against rabbit, pepper, allspice, butter, flour, 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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