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Ragout of Rabbit

A hearty rabbit stew with bacon, carrots, onions, and a flour-based sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,555 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Ragout of Rabbit

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wash and clean the rabbit, cut it into neat joints, and dry with a cloth.

  2. Cut the bacon into slices and fry in a stewpan until crispy, then remove.

Brown and stew

  1. Fry the rabbit in the same pan until light brown, then remove.

  2. Add the chopped vegetables to the pan and fry until pale brown.

  3. Stir in the flour and fry until it turns a deep golden color.

  4. Add the water or stock and stir until boiling.

  5. Return the rabbit and bacon to the pan, cover, and stew gently for two hours.

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. Carrot + peppertop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,555 recipes

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

  2. Carrot + oniontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 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. Carrot + flourtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,029 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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 through long gentle stewing.
Bacon
Renders fat into the pan that carries flavor for browning the other ingredients.
Flour
Browns in the fat and thickens the cooking liquid into a rich sauce.
Onion
Browns in the pan to build savory sweetness that flavors the sauce.
Carrot
Adds subtle sweetness and body to the sauce as it softens during stewing.

The step that matters

Browning the flour. Frying the flour until deep golden toasts it and removes raw starch taste, and the fat coating helps it thicken smoothly when liquid is added without lumps.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Turnipfits better
  2. Parsnipfits better
  3. Spinachfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against rabbit, carrot, 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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