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Stewed Rabbits

A rabbit stew with bacon, onions, mushrooms, and a lemon‑flavored sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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

Prepare

  1. Cut the rabbit into pieces and remove any excess fat.

  2. In a pot, cook the bacon until crispy, then add the rabbit pieces. Stir constantly with a wooden spoon.

  3. Dredge in 1 tablespoon of flour and mix well.

Stew

  1. Add water or stock gradually, stirring until the rabbit is just covered.

  2. Season with pepper, coarse sea salt, and a small piece of lemon peel.

  3. Simmer slowly for 20 minutes.

  4. Add the blanched onions and mushrooms.

Finish and serve

  1. Once the rabbit is cooked, remove it and place it on a serving dish.

  2. Boil the sauce until it coats the back of a spoon, then pour it 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. Onion + mushroomtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,626 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Mushroom + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,580 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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 as it simmers slowly in liquid.
Bacon
Renders fat into the pot that flavours the rabbit and the sauce.
Flour
Coats the rabbit and thickens the cooking liquid into a sauce that clings to the meat.
Button onions
Add sweetness and soften during cooking, adding body to the stew.
Mushrooms
Add earthy flavour and moisture to the sauce as they cook.

The step that matters

Dredging the rabbit in flour. Flour must be mixed evenly into the fat so it cooks out and thickens the liquid smoothly. Clumps stay raw-tasting and leave lumps in the sauce.

Swap the onion

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

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

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