Skip to main content
Main

Rich Rabbit Stew

A hearty rabbit stew with onions, bacon, and brown gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

Rich Rabbit Stew

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wash and dry the rabbit joints.

Brown and stew

  1. Heat the butter in a saucepan and add the sliced onion and diced bacon; fry until brown, then remove to a plate.

  2. Add the rabbit joints to the pan and fry until brown.

  3. Sprinkle the rabbit with flour, then add the browned onion and bacon, along with pepper and salt.

  4. Pour in the stock and stew gently until the rabbit is tender.

Serve

  1. Serve in the center of a dish with brown gravy.

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. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Rabbit + flourtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetaldehyde (pungent, ethereal).

  5. Butter + oniontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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 stewing.
Flour
Dusted on the rabbit to thicken the stock into a gravy.
Bacon
Adds savoury, smoky fat that flavours the stew and the pan.
Onion
Softens and sweetens as it browns, adding depth to the stew.
Stock
Forms the cooking liquid that gently tenderises the rabbit.

The step that matters

Stew gently until the rabbit is tender. Rabbit is lean and can turn dry and tough if boiled hard. A gentle simmer lets the connective tissue break down slowly, keeping the meat moist and tender.

Swap the onion

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

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

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

More rabbit stew recipes

in Milk 5Spanish 5Herb 4Bordeaux 3with Bacon 3with Bacon and Sherry 3 See all 81 →

You might also like

Rabbit PattiesRabbit Patties6 recipesTomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipes