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Rabbit for Invalid

A rabbit stew simmered with salt, pepper, Liebig’s extract, and arrowroot thickening.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Rabbit and beef work together. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 252 recipes. Both carry decanal, which smells soap, orange peel. The science ↓

Rabbit for Invalid

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the rabbit

  1. Soak the rabbit in a basin of strong salt and water for 1 hour.

  2. Remove the rabbit from the water and place it in a saucepan.

Simmer

  1. Pour the cold water over the rabbit and bring to a boil.

  2. Once boiling, reduce heat and let it simmer slowly for 1 hour and 15 minutes.

Thicken and serve

  1. In a small bowl, mix the arrowroot with 1 tablespoon of cold water.

  2. Stir the arrowroot mixture into the saucepan and add the Liebig’s extract.

  3. Simmer for an additional 10 minutes, then serve the rabbit on a hot dish with the sauce poured over.

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. Rabbit + beeftop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together252 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  2. Beef + peppertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,971 recipes

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

  3. Pepper + arrowroottop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together329 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Rabbit + arrowroottop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27 recipes

    Shared aroma: geraniol (rose, geranium).

  5. Rabbit + peppertop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,334 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-pentylpyridine (fat).

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

What each ingredient does

Rabbit
Main protein; slow, gentle simmering breaks down connective tissue so the meat turns tender.
Arrowroot
Thickens the cooking liquid into a light sauce as its starch swells in heat.
Liebig’s extract of beef
Adds concentrated beef flavour to the cooking liquid, deepening the savoury taste of the sauce.

The step that matters

Simmer slowly for 1 hour and 15 minutes. A gentle simmer lets the rabbit's connective tissue soften slowly, while a hard boil toughens and dries the meat fibres and can make the broth cloudy.

Swap the arrowroot

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (rabbit, beef, pepper):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Potatofits better
  3. Onionfits better
  4. Arrowrootthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against rabbit, beef, pepper. 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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