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Stewed Rabbits

A stew of rabbit pieces browned with bacon, butter, flour, and stock, finished with onions, mushrooms, pepper, salt, and lemon peel.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Stewed Rabbits

Ingredients

Directions

Make the stew

  1. Melt the butter in a stewpan over medium heat.

  2. Add the bacon and fry until lightly browned.

  3. Add the rabbit pieces and fry until nicely browned, stirring constantly.

  4. Stir in the flour and gradually add water or stock until the rabbit is just covered.

  5. Season with pepper, salt, and lemon peel.

  6. Skim the surface and simmer slowly.

  7. Add the blanched onions and mushrooms.

  8. Once the rabbit is cooked, remove it and arrange it on a dish.

Finish the sauce

  1. Boil the sauce until it coats the back of a spoon, skim, and pour over the rabbit.

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 + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. Butter + mushroomtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

  3. Onion + mushroomtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,626 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Pepper + mushroomtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,580 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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 and browns for flavour.
Butter or sweet dripping
Carries the browning of the rabbit and adds richness to the sauce.
Streaky bacon
Adds savoury, smoky fat that seasons the stew as it renders.
Flour
Browns with the fat and thickens the liquid into a sauce that coats the meat.
Button onions
Add sweetness and soften during the slow simmer.
Mushrooms
Add earthy savouriness and moisture to the sauce.

The step that matters

Browning the rabbit. Frying the rabbit until nicely browned, stirring constantly, builds the colour and roasted flavour of the stew. Pale or unevenly cooked pieces give a flat taste, and stirring prevents the flour from scorching later.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Spinachfits better
  3. Asparagusfits better
  4. Onionthe original

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