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Rabbit Ragout

A rabbit ragout flavored with onion, bay leaf, peppercorns, cloves, cinnamon, vinegar, rye crust, brown sugar, and ginger snaps.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,189 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Rabbit Ragout

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Boil the rabbit with the onion, bay leaf, peppercorns, cloves, and cinnamon until tender.

  2. Add coarse sea salt, vinegar, and the crust of the rye loaf.

  3. Once tender, remove the rabbit to a heated platter and keep covered.

  4. Boil down the gravy until thick, adding brown sugar and ginger snaps to thicken.

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. Clove + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Cinnamon + gingertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,380 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Clove + gingertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,038 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Cinnamon + ryetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together85 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  5. Onion + gingertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,595 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
Forms the main body of the dish, becoming tender as it simmers in the liquid.
Vinegar
Adds sharp acidity that balances the sweetness of the brown sugar in the gravy.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness that contrasts with the vinegar's sourness.
Ginger snaps
Their starch helps thicken the gravy as it reduces.
Rye loaf crust
Adds toasted, earthy flavour and body to the cooking liquid.

The step that matters

Boil down the gravy until thick. Reducing concentrates the flavours and lets the ginger snaps and sugar thicken the liquid. Boiling too briefly leaves a thin gravy, while over-reducing can make it overly sweet and sticky.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (rabbit, clove, cinnamon, vinegar, rye, sugar, ginger):

  1. Mustardfits better
  2. Beetrootfits better
  3. Arrowrootfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against rabbit, clove, cinnamon, vinegar, rye, sugar, ginger. 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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