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Ragout of Rabbit

A stew of rabbit pieces braised in wine, onions, and spices, finished with a thickened gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and parsley are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 25,843 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Ragout of Rabbit

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the rabbit

  1. Soak the rabbit pieces in salted water for 1 hour, then dry each piece.

  2. Sprinkle the rabbit with salt and ginger.

Stew

  1. In a porcelain-lined stew pan, melt the butter and sauté the onions until light brown.

  2. Add the red wine, bay leaves, and peppercorns, then add the rabbit and stew until tender.

  3. Carefully remove the rabbit pieces and keep warm on a platter.

Finish the gravy and serve

  1. Remove fat from the gravy and boil hard for a few minutes.

  2. Thicken the gravy with flour, strain through a fine sieve, and pour over the rabbit.

  3. Garnish with small pickled onions and curly parsley.

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

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

  2. Ginger + oniontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,595 recipes

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

  3. Ginger + parsleytop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together676 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + parsleytop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,675 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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 in liquid.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, and helps the onions brown in the pan.
Onions
Browned in butter to add sweetness and savoury depth to the gravy.
Red wine
Forms the braising liquid, adding acidity and flavour to the gravy.
Flour
Thickens the gravy so it coats the rabbit rather than running off.

The step that matters

Stewing the rabbit until tender. Rabbit is lean and dries out quickly, so it needs gentle, moist heat over a long period. Simmering slowly in the wine lets connective tissue break down, keeping the meat tender instead of tough.

Swap the ginger

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (rabbit, onion, butter, red wine, flour, parsley):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Garlicfits better
  3. Capersfits better
  4. Gingerthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against rabbit, onion, butter, red wine, flour, parsley. 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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