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Smothered Rabbit

Smothered rabbit is a stew of rabbit simmered with water, spices, butter, and onions.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,451 recipes. Both carry ethyl octanoate, which smells fruity, wine. The science ↓

Smothered Rabbit

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the rabbit

  1. Clean the rabbit, remove the head, wash it well, and skewer it for roasting.

  2. Place the rabbit in a stew pan with water, pepper, salt, mace, and cloves.

Simmer

  1. Cover and simmer slowly.

  2. When half cooked, add butter rolled in flour.

  3. If water evaporates, add a little more.

Prepare the onions

  1. Peel and boil onions until tender.

  2. Drain and chop finely.

  3. Season onions with salt, pepper, and butter.

Serve

  1. Once the rabbit is done, place it on a serving dish.

  2. Add onions to the gravy, bring to a boil, and pour over the rabbit.

  3. 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 + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  2. Mace + clovetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  3. Pepper + oniontop 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. Clove + oniontop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,901 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

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 main meat, which becomes tender through slow, moist simmering.
Butter rolled in flour
Enriches the cooking liquid and, with the flour, thickens it into a gravy.
Onions
Add sweetness and body to the gravy when cooked and folded into it.

The step that matters

Simmer slowly with covered pan. Slow, covered simmering keeps the rabbit moist and tender. If the liquid boils down, the meat can dry out and the gravy can scorch, so topping up water matters.

Swap the mace

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

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

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