Skip to main content
Main

Rabbits in Prying Pan

A rabbit stew cooked with onions, fat, water, and liver, heart, and brain, served over boiled rice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Pepper and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Rabbits in Prying Pan

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the rabbit

  1. Remove all superfluous bones from the rabbit pieces and flatten them.

  2. Season the rabbit with salt and pepper.

Brown and simmer

  1. Heat the fat in a pan over medium heat.

  2. Add the sliced onions to the pan.

  3. Add the rabbit pieces to the pan and cook gently for about 20 minutes.

  4. Remove the rabbit pieces from the pan.

Make the sauce

  1. Chop the liver, heart, and brains.

  2. Fry the chopped liver, heart, and brains with the remaining fat and chopped parsley.

  3. Pour off some of the fat.

  4. Add the water.

  5. Season the mixture.

  6. Bring the mixture to a boil.

  7. Add curry powder if desired.

  8. Pour the sauce over the rabbit.

  9. Serve with boiled rice on the side.

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 + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  2. Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

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

  3. Onion + ricetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,433 recipes

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

  4. Parsley + ricetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,762 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  5. Onion + peppertop 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 main meat, which becomes tender as it cooks gently in the fat.
Onions
Soften and sweeten as they cook, adding body to the sauce.
Liver, heart, and brains
Fried and added to the sauce, giving it a rich, deeply savoury flavour.
Fat
Carries heat evenly for frying and adds richness and flavour to the dish.

The step that matters

Cooking the rabbit gently. Cooking over medium heat for about 20 minutes keeps the lean rabbit meat from drying out and toughening. Too much heat seizes the proteins and makes the meat dry.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Carrotfits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Mustardfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against rabbit, pepper, parsley, liver, rice. 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.

You might also like

Rice FrittersRice Fritters84 recipesSteamed RiceSteamed Rice48 recipesRice Griddle CakesRice Griddle Cakes28 recipesRice and Cheese CasseroleRice and Cheese Casserole23 recipes