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Stewed Rabbits

A stew of rabbit cooked with herbs, onion, mace, pepper, and salt, thickened with flour and milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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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 ↓

Stewed Rabbits

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wash the rabbits in warm water and cut them into joints.

  2. Place the joints in a saucepan and cover with water or broth.

  3. Add parsley, thyme, and onion to the saucepan.

  4. Stew gently for three hours.

  5. Season with mace, pepper, and salt.

Finish and serve

  1. Transfer the meat to a tureen.

  2. Thicken the broth with flour and milk before pouring it over the meat.

  3. Remove the bunch of herbs 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. Parsley + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Thyme + peppertop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,585 recipes

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

  4. Thyme + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,171 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Parsley + oniontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Rabbits
Provide the main meat, which becomes tender through long, gentle stewing.
Flour
Thickens the broth into a smooth, body-rich sauce when combined with liquid.
Milk
Adds richness and creaminess to the thickened broth.
Onion
Adds savory sweetness and aroma to the stewing liquid as it cooks down.

The step that matters

Thicken the broth with flour and milk before pouring it over the meat. Flour must be blended smoothly into the liquid, ideally with some cold liquid first, so it does not clump. Starch swells when heated, so the sauce thickens evenly only when the mixture is stirred well.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (rabbit, parsley, thyme, onion, pepper, flour, milk):

  1. Marjoramfits better
  2. Winter savoryfits better
  3. Sagefits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against rabbit, parsley, thyme, onion, pepper, flour, milk. 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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