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Babbit with Onions

A rabbit stew cooked with onions, bacon, butter, flour, and herbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and thyme match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,057 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Babbit with Onions

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the rabbit

  1. Place the trussed rabbit in cold water.

  2. Pour onion gravy over the rabbit.

  3. Boil the rabbit in a white stock-pot.

Brown and thicken

  1. In a stewpan, fry the bacon pieces until brown.

  2. Remove the bacon and set aside.

  3. Add butter to the stewpan.

  4. Add the rabbit pieces to the stewpan and toss until browned.

  5. Sprinkle flour over the rabbit and keep turning until the flour is dry.

  6. Add water to the pan and stir well.

Stew

  1. Return the bacon, parsley, thyme, bay leaf, onions, salt, and pepper to the pan.

  2. Stew slowly for five hours, adding more water and butter if the sauce decreases.

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. Parsley + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  3. Thyme + peppertop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,585 recipes

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

  4. Onion + thymetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,171 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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 becomes tender through long, slow stewing.
Bacon
Adds fat and savory flavor to the browned base and the stew.
Butter
Adds fat and richness and helps the rabbit brown in the pan.
Flour
Coats the rabbit and thickens the stewing liquid into a sauce.
Small onions
Soften during stewing, adding sweetness and aroma to the gravy.

The step that matters

Turning the rabbit in flour until dry. Cooking the flour briefly on the rabbit removes its raw taste and helps it thicken the liquid evenly once water is added, instead of leaving lumps.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against rabbit, butter, flour, parsley, thyme, 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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