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Jugged Rabbit

A rabbit stew cooked with butter, flour, water, onion, lemon juice, mushroom ketchup, and optional sherry wine, served over boiled rice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Jugged Rabbit

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the rabbit

  1. Cut the rabbit into pieces.

  2. Roll each piece in flour.

  3. Heat the butter in a frying pan.

  4. Brown the meat on all sides.

  5. Remove the meat and place it in a saucepan.

Make the gravy

  1. Add 2 tablespoons of flour to the fat in the frying pan. Stir until brown.

  2. Add 3 cups of water.

  3. Cook for 10 minutes.

  4. Pour the gravy over the meat.

Simmer and serve

  1. Add salt, pepper, a little spice, and the uncut onion.

  2. Cover closely.

  3. Simmer for 1.5 hours.

  4. Stir in the lemon juice, mushroom ketchup, and sherry wine before serving.

  5. Serve immediately with boiled rice.

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 + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. Mushroom + sherrytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,176 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methoxy-4-methylphenol (smoky, clove).

  3. Butter + mushroomtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

  4. Onion + mushroomtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,626 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  5. Pepper + oniontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

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 long, moist simmering.
Butter
Carries browning in the frying pan and adds richness to the meat's surface.
Flour
Coats the meat for browning and, cooked in the fat, thickens the gravy.
Mushroom ketchup
Adds savoury, umami depth to the gravy.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich, slow-cooked gravy.

The step that matters

Browning the meat on all sides. Browning creates Maillard flavour compounds that the gravy and simmering cannot add later. Pale meat tastes flat, so the pieces need time and enough fat to colour evenly before the liquid goes in.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (rabbit, butter, flour, pepper, lemon, mushroom, sherry):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Spinachfits better
  3. Asparagusfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against rabbit, butter, flour, pepper, lemon, mushroom, sherry. 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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