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Stewed Rabbit

A rabbit stew made with bacon, onions, cloves, milk, and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,451 recipes. Both carry ethyl octanoate, which smells fruity, wine. The science ↓

Stewed Rabbit

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the rabbit into neat pieces.

  2. Soak the head and neck in salt water to draw out blood.

  3. Wash the rabbit.

Simmer

  1. Place it in a saucepan with onions, cloves, and bacon (cut into small pieces).

  2. Add enough cold water to cover.

  3. Simmer gently for 1.5 hours.

Finish

  1. Mix flour, salt, and pepper with the milk.

  2. Carefully add to the rabbit and boil for 5 minutes.

  3. Pour a little boiling water over the bacon to remove excess salt.

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. Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

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

  3. Onion + clovetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,901 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

  4. Rabbit + oniontop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,292 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Rabbit + flourtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetaldehyde (pungent, ethereal).

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 slow simmering makes its meat tender.
Bacon
Adds fat and savoury flavour to the broth as it cooks.
Milk
Adds richness and a creamy body to the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the liquid into a smoother sauce as its starch cooks.
Onions
Add sweetness and aroma as they soften in the stew.
Cloves
Add a warm, spiced aroma to the broth.

The step that matters

Adding the flour and milk mixture. Add it carefully so the flour blends in without lumps. Flour starch thickens when heated, but clumps stay clumped. Boiling briefly afterwards fully cooks the starch, so the sauce thickens evenly and loses its raw floury taste.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Arrowrootfits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Shallotfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against rabbit, milk, flour, clove, 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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