Skip to main content
Main

Stewed Rabbit

A rabbit stew with onions, herbs, and a gravy thickened with flour, served with bacon garnish.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Onion and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 68,474 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Stewed Rabbit

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare and brown

  1. Flour the rabbit joints.

  2. Fry the joints in butter or dripping with sliced onions and herbs until nicely browned.

Simmer and finish

  1. Add warm stock or water and simmer gently for about 2 hours until tender.

  2. Thicken the gravy with flour and season with salt, pepper, and catsup or port.

  3. Serve the rabbit piled on a dish, pour the gravy over it, and garnish with small rolls of bacon.

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 + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  2. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Rabbit + oniontop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,292 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Rabbit + flourtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetaldehyde (pungent, ethereal).

  5. Butter + oniontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

Flour and butter 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 meat that becomes tender during slow simmering.
Flour
Coats the joints for browning and later thickens the gravy.
Butter or dripping
Fat for frying the joints, adding browning and rich flavour.
Onions
Soften and sweeten as they cook, flavouring the gravy.
Stock or water
Liquid that simmers the rabbit and forms the base of the gravy.

The step that matters

Browning the joints. Frying the floured joints until nicely browned builds the Maillard flavours that give the gravy depth. Pale joints produce a blander, less savoury sauce.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Chivefits better
  3. Mustardfits better
  4. Onionthe original

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

More stewed rabbit recipes

in Milk 8French 4 See all 67 →

You might also like

Rabbit PattiesRabbit Patties6 recipesTomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipes