Skip to main content
Main

Rabbits

A rabbit stew cooked with bacon, mushrooms, brandy, wine, and herbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Butter and mushroom are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 12,525 recipes. Both carry trans-2-decenal, which smells waxy, orange. The science ↓

Rabbits

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the bacon

  1. Cut the bacon into pieces about 1½ in. by 1 in.

  2. Blanch the bacon pieces.

  3. Dry the bacon pieces.

Brown the bacon and mushrooms

  1. Melt the butter in a frying pan.

  2. Fry the bacon until light yellow.

  3. Remove the bacon from the pan.

  4. Fry the mushrooms in the same pan.

  5. Keep the mushrooms warm.

Braise the rabbit

  1. Add the rabbit pieces to the pan.

  2. Fry gently for 10 minutes.

  3. Dredge the rabbit pieces with flour.

  4. Stir for 2 minutes.

  5. Add broth, red wine, herbs, salt, pepper, bacon, and mushrooms.

  6. Simmer gently for 20 minutes.

  7. Add more mushrooms.

  8. Cook for 5 minutes longer.

  9. Remove the herbs.

  10. Serve the rabbit on a hot dish.

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

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

  2. Red wine + mushroomtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together720 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methoxy-4-methylphenol (smoky, clove).

  3. Red wine + brandytop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together103 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, sweet).

  4. Pepper + mushroomtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,580 recipes

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

  5. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour 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

Rabbit
Lean meat that becomes tender and absorbs flavour during gentle simmering.
Bacon
Renders fat and adds smoky, salty savouriness to the pan and sauce.
Butter
Fat for frying that carries flavour and helps the meat and mushrooms brown.
Flour
Starch that coats the rabbit and thickens the sauce as it cooks.
Red wine
Acidity and flavour that deepen and balance the braising liquid.
Mushrooms
Adds earthy savouriness and moisture that enrich the sauce.

The step that matters

Stir the floured rabbit for 2 minutes. Cooking the flour briefly in the fat lets it thicken the sauce smoothly and removes the raw, pasty taste that uncooked flour would leave in the stew.

“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.

You might also like

Mushroom SoupMushroom Soup60 recipesRabbit PattiesRabbit Patties6 recipesTomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipes