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Smothered Rabbit

A rabbit cooked slowly in a gravy of water, spices, butter, and onions.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,451 recipes. Both carry ethyl octanoate, which smells fruity, wine. The science ↓

Smothered Rabbit

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Skewer the rabbit as if for roasting and place it in a saucepan.

Simmer

  1. Add water, pepper, salt, mace, and cloves, then cover and simmer slowly.

  2. When half cooked, add the butter rolled in flour.

  3. If the water reduces too much, add a little more.

Finish and serve

  1. Chop the boiled onions finely and season with salt, pepper, and butter.

  2. Once the rabbit is done, place it on a serving dish.

  3. Add the seasoned onions to the gravy, bring to a boil, and pour over the rabbit before serving hot.

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 + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  2. Mace + clovetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  3. Pepper + oniontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Clove + oniontop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,901 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

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, covered simmering.
Butter
Enriches the gravy with fat and richness, and flour binds it into a smooth sauce.
Flour
Thickens the cooking liquid into a gravy when rolled with the butter.
Onions
Add body and savoury sweetness to the gravy once chopped and seasoned.

The step that matters

Keeping the water topped up. If the liquid reduces too far during slow simmering, the rabbit can dry out and the gravy can scorch, so adding a little more water keeps the meat moist and the sauce smooth.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Turmericfits better
  3. Nutmegfits better
  4. Macethe original

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