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Spanish Stew

A slow-cooked rabbit stew with onion, pepper, salt, and bacon, simmered in a covered earthenware jar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 68,474 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Spanish Stew

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. In a deep earthenware jar, layer sliced onion and rabbit alternately.

  2. Season each layer with a little pepper and coarse sea salt.

  3. Top with slices of bacon.

  4. Cover the jar securely with two or three folds of greased paper.

Cook

  1. Place the jar in a saucepan of boiling water, almost up to its neck.

  2. Boil for two and a half hours.

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. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  2. Onion + rabbittop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,292 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Rabbit + peppertop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,334 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-pentylpyridine (fat).

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

What each ingredient does

Rabbit
Forms the main body of the stew and becomes tender during the long slow cooking.
Bacon
Adds fat and savoury flavour that seeps down through the rabbit as it cooks.
Sliced onion
Breaks down during cooking, adding sweetness and body to the juices.

The step that matters

Sealing the jar. The greased paper cover must fit securely so steam stays inside. If it leaks, moisture escapes and the rabbit can dry out while the jar sits in the water bath.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Mustardfits better
  3. Spinachfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against rabbit, pepper. 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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