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Rabbit Stew

A hearty stew of rabbit pieces simmered with pork fat, onion, carrot, and seasonings, thickened with flour and finished with lemon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 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 ↓

Rabbit Stew

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the rabbits into pieces for fricassee and wipe each piece dry.

  2. Dredge the rabbit pieces in flour.

Brown and simmer

  1. In a stewpan, fry the fat salt pork until brown.

  2. Add the rabbit pieces, salt, pepper, onion, and carrot to the pan and fry together.

  3. If desired, add summer savory or thyme.

  4. Cover with hot water and simmer gently for 2 to 3 hours.

Finish and serve

  1. Thicken the stew with 1 tablespoon of flour and add the juice of a lemon before serving.

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. Pepper + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,555 recipes

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

  3. Onion + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

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

  4. Rabbit + porktop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together832 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Summer savory + lemontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together115 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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 during long gentle simmering.
Flour
Coats the rabbit to help it brown, and later thickens the stew liquid.
Fat salt pork
Renders fat for frying, adding richness and browned flavor to the stew.
Onion
Softens and sweetens as it fries, adding savory depth to the stew.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich, savory stew flavor.

The step that matters

Simmer gently for 2 to 3 hours. A gentle simmer breaks down the connective tissue in rabbit slowly, making the meat tender. A hard boil toughens muscle fibers and can leave the meat dry and stringy.

Swap the summer savory

The recipe marks summer savory as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (rabbit, flour, pork, pepper, onion, carrot, lemon):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Marjoramfits better
  4. Summer savorythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against rabbit, flour, pork, pepper, onion, carrot, lemon. 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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