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Spanish Stew

A rabbit stew cooked slowly with onions, bacon, salt, pepper, and water in a jar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 68,474 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Spanish Stew

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the jar

  1. Layer sliced onions and rabbit pieces alternately in a deep earthenware jar. Season each layer with a little coarse sea salt and black pepper.

  2. Top with slices of bacon.

  3. Cover the jar securely with greased paper.

Cook

  1. Place the jar in a saucepan of boiling water, almost up to its neck. Boil for 2.5 hours.

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Rabbit + peppertop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,334 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-pentylpyridine (fat).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Rabbits
Provide the main meat, which becomes tender during the long, gentle cooking.
Onions
Add sweetness and moisture as they soften and release juices into the stew.
Bacon
Adds fat and savoury flavour that seasons the meat and onions as it cooks.

The step that matters

Keeping the jar sealed and the water at a steady boil. The greased paper traps steam so the rabbit cooks in its own juices rather than drying out. If the cover is loose or the water boils dry, the meat can toughen or lose moisture over the 2.5 hours.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Mustardfits better
  3. Spinachfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against rabbit, 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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