Name: Leveret , or Rabbit, with Herbs
Ingredients: 1 leveret or rabbit, cut into pieces; 2 tablespoons butter; coarse sea salt, to taste; black pepper, to taste; 2 tablespoons chopped parsley; 2 tablespoons chopped sorrel; 2 young onions, chopped; juice of 1 lemon

Why it works: Parsley and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Leveret , or Rabbit, with Herbs

Ingredients

Directions

In a stew pan, combine the rabbit pieces with butter, salt, pepper, parsley, sorrel, and chopped onions.
Cook until the rabbit is sufficiently done.
Add the lemon juice before serving.
Optionally, broil the legs and lay them on top.

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.

Parsley + lemontop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together14,037 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).
Parsley + sorreltop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together234 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together34,122 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together27,047 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
Sorrel + lemontop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together149 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Rabbit: Provides the main protein, which becomes tender as it cooks slowly in the stew.
Butter: Adds fat and richness, carrying flavour and giving the stew a silky mouthfeel.
Lemon juice: Adds acidity that brightens the rich meat and herbs just before serving.
Sorrel: Contributes a sharp, lemony herbal note that complements the rabbit.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (rabbit, butter, pepper, parsley, sorrel, lemon):

Shallotfits better
Spinachfits better
Leekfits better
Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against rabbit, butter, pepper, parsley, sorrel, lemon. 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.