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Stewed Rabbit

A rabbit stew cooked with bacon or pork, onions, dripping, flour, and boiling water, seasoned with salt and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Rabbit and pork work together. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 832 recipes. Both carry decanal, which smells soap, orange peel. The science ↓

Stewed Rabbit

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the rabbit into joints.

  2. Wash the rabbit in warm water.

  3. Dry the rabbit.

  4. Dredge the rabbit with flour.

Brown and stew

  1. Heat the dripping in a stew pan.

  2. Fry the rabbit and onions until lightly browned.

  3. Drain off the dripping.

  4. Add enough boiling water to cover the rabbit and bacon or pork cut into strips.

  5. Cover the pot closely.

  6. Remove the scum before it boils.

  7. Simmer for 1.5 hours or until tender.

Make the gravy and serve

  1. Place the rabbit on a hot dish.

  2. Mix the flour with a little water to make a smooth paste.

  3. Stir the paste into the gravy.

  4. Let the gravy boil for a few minutes.

  5. Season to taste and pour the gravy 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. Rabbit + porktop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together832 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  2. Pork + oniontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,214 recipes

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

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

    Shared aroma: acetaldehyde (pungent, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Rabbit
Forms the main body of the dish, becoming tender through slow simmering.
Flour
Coats the rabbit to help it brown, and thickens the liquid into gravy.
Dripping
Fat for frying that carries browning flavour into the dish.
Onions
Soften during frying and simmering, adding sweetness to the gravy.
Bacon or pork
Adds savoury, fatty flavour to the cooking liquid.

The step that matters

Remove the scum before it boils. Scum is coagulated protein and impurities rising from the meat. Skimming it early keeps the gravy clean and clear, and a gentle simmer keeps the meat tender rather than tough.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Mustardfits better
  3. Potatofits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against rabbit, pork, flour, 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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