Name: Rabbit with Herbs
Ingredients: 1 rabbit, cut into pieces; 2 tablespoons butter; 2 tablespoons parsley, chopped; 2 tablespoons chives, chopped; ½ cup mushrooms, chopped; 2 bay leaves; 1 teaspoon thyme, chopped; 1 tablespoon flour

Why it works: Parsley and thyme match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,057 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Rabbit with Herbs

Ingredients

Directions

Place the rabbit pieces in a stew pan with butter, parsley, chives, mushrooms, bay leaves, and thyme.
Cook until the rabbit is done.
Add flour to thicken the sauce.

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.

Parsley + thymetop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together9,057 recipes

Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).
Parsley + chivetop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together2,150 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Chive + thymetop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together580 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).
Mushroom + thymetop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,557 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).
Butter + mushroomtop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together12,525 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

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

What each ingredient does

Rabbit: Provides the main protein, which becomes tender as it cooks slowly in the stew.
Butter: Adds fat and richness, carrying the herb flavours into the stew.
Mushrooms: Add savoury depth and moisture as they release liquid into the stew.
Flour: Thickens the sauce by swelling with the cooking liquid.

Swap the chive

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

Shallotfits better
Leekfits about as well
Chivethe original
Turnipfits about as well

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