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Pilau of Rabbit

A stew of rabbit with onions, ginger, lemon, butter, rice, milk, peppercorns, and cloves, baked in a sealed jar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Ginger and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,038 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Pilau of Rabbit

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the meat

  1. Pound the onions in a mortar, then extract the juice from the onions.

  2. Mix the onion juice with ground ginger, salt, and lemon juice, then rub the mixture into the meat.

Fry and stew

  1. Slice the 2 onions and fry them in butter until brown.

  2. Remove the fried onions from the pan.

  3. Add the meat to the pan and let it stew with the fried onions.

Bake in a jar

  1. Combine the half-boiled rice with the meat in a jar.

  2. Add milk, peppercorns, cloves, and more salt to the jar.

  3. Secure the jar and bake until done.

  4. Add broth if needed to moisten.

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. Ginger + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,038 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Ginger + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,154 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  3. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  4. Rice + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,374 recipes

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

  5. Onion + gingertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,595 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Rice
Forms the body of the pilaf, absorbing liquid and becoming tender as it cooks.
Butter
Carries the flavour of the onions and browns them, adding richness to the dish.
Onions
Add sweetness and savoury depth as they brown, and their juice flavours the meat.
Milk
Adds moisture and mild richness to the rice and meat during baking.

The step that matters

Fry the sliced onions in butter until brown. Onions turn from pale to deeply browned through the Maillard reaction and caramelisation, which builds sweetness and colour. Stopping too early leaves the dish bland; taking them too far brings bitterness.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (rabbit, ginger, lemon, butter, rice, milk, clove):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Carrotfits better
  3. Asparagusfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against rabbit, ginger, lemon, butter, rice, milk, 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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