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Matelote of Rabbit

A rabbit and eel stew with onions, mushrooms, herbs, and wine.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Nutmeg and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,686 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Matelote of Rabbit

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Skin and clean the rabbit and eel.

  2. Cut the rabbit into joints and the eel into short pieces.

Make the sauce

  1. Melt butter in a saucepan and brown the onions.

  2. Remove the onions from the pan.

  3. Brown the rabbit pieces in the same pan.

  4. Add flour to the pan with the butter and rabbit, stirring until smooth.

  5. Add the eel, onions, mushrooms, nutmeg, salt, pepper, herbs, and garlic to the pan.

  6. Pour in enough white wine and broth to moisten.

  7. Boil quickly until cooked.

  8. Remove garlic and herbs from the sauce.

  9. Boil for 2-3 minutes.

Serve

  1. Arrange rabbit pieces in the center of a dish with eel pieces around it.

  2. Pour over the rabbit.

  3. Serve hot.

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. Nutmeg + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,686 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Pepper + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

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

  4. Nutmeg + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

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

  5. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 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 browns in the butter and becomes tender as it simmers in the sauce.
Eel
Adds firm, rich fish pieces that cook in the same wine and broth sauce as the rabbit.
Flour
Thickens the cooking liquid into a smooth sauce that clings to the meat.
Butter
Carries the initial browning of the onions and rabbit and adds richness to the sauce.
Onions
Soften and sweeten as they brown, adding depth to the sauce.
White wine
Adds acidity and aroma to the sauce and helps moisten the dish.

The step that matters

Brown the rabbit pieces in the same pan. Browning builds deep flavour through the Maillard reaction, which depends on dry, hot surfaces. Crowding the pan or leaving moisture on the meat causes steaming instead, leaving the sauce flat.

Swap the onion

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

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

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