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Cavy Aux Pines Herbes

A rabbit stewed in a herb-infused roux with parsley, green onions, pepper, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Cavy Aux Pines Herbes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the roux

  1. Blanch the Cavy in boiling water and cut into joints.

  2. Make a white roux with flour and butter in a moderate-sized stewpan.

  3. Stir the roux over heat until thick and smooth.

Stew and finish

  1. Add parsley, green onions, pepper, and salt to the roux.

  2. Stew the Cavy in the mixture for two hours or until tender.

  3. If using stock instead of water, the dish will improve.

  4. Thicken with the yolk of an egg before serving.

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. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  2. Parsley + oniontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 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. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + parsleytop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,675 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

Cavy
Provides the meat, which becomes tender through long, slow stewing.
Flour
Thickens the liquid when cooked with butter to form a roux.
Butter
Adds richness and carries flavor into the roux.
Egg yolk
Enriches and thickens the finished sauce at the end.
Parsley
Adds fresh, green herbal aroma to the stew.
Green onions
Add a mild onion flavor and fresh aroma to the sauce.

The step that matters

Thickening with the egg yolk. If the yolk goes into liquid that is still boiling, it can scramble and curdle instead of thickening. Remove the stew from the heat, stir in a little hot liquid first to warm the yolk gently, then stir the mixture back into the pot so the sauce thickens smoothly.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, butter, parsley, pepper, egg. 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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