Why it works: Rabbit and sugar work together. They rank in the top 29% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 113 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓
Rabbit
Ingredients
Directions
In a pot, combine the rabbit pieces with the claret and sugar.
Cook until the rabbit is tender.
Place the cooked rabbit on a dish and pour the sauce over it.
Serve immediately.
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.
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Rabbit + sugartop 29% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together113 recipes
Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).
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 as it simmers slowly in liquid.
- Claret
- Supplies the cooking liquid, moisture, and the wine flavor that becomes the sauce.
- Sugar
- Adds a little sweetness that softens the wine's acidity.
The step that matters
Cook until the rabbit is tender. Rabbit is lean and can turn tough if undercooked, or dry and stringy if overcooked. Gentle, moist cooking in the wine breaks down the connective tissue, so check tenderness by testing the meat rather than relying on time alone.
“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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