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Stewed Rabbit

A rabbit stew with bacon, vegetables, and apple, simmered in water and thickened with flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and carrot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,053 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Stewed Rabbit

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the rabbit into pieces and soak in salt water for 1 hour, then dry thoroughly.

  2. In a stewpan, melt a piece of butter and brown the rabbit pieces.

  3. Add the chopped onion and apple, then pour in the boiling water.

Stew and thicken

  1. Stew gently for 2 hours.

  2. In a separate pot, boil the carrot and turnip until well cooked, then drain and add to the stewpan with the rabbit.

  3. Mix a little flour with cold water and season with salt and pepper.

Serve

  1. When ready to serve, place the rabbit in the center of a dish with the vegetables around it, and pour the sauce over, adding the chopped parsley.

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 + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

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

  2. Turnip + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Parsley + turniptop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,842 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Turnip + oniontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Carrot + oniontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 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

Rabbit
Provides the main meat, which becomes tender through long, gentle stewing.
Flour
Thickens the cooking liquid into a smooth sauce as it heats.
Bacon
Adds savory fat and smoky flavor to the stewed dish.
Apple
Adds gentle sweetness and body to the stewing liquid.
Onion
Builds savory depth as it softens into the stew.

The step that matters

Browning the rabbit pieces. Browning in butter creates surface flavor through the Maillard reaction. Pieces that are wet or crowded steam instead of browning, which is why the rabbit is dried thoroughly first.

Swap the apple

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (rabbit, parsley, turnip, carrot, onion, butter, flour):

  1. Lemonfits better
  2. Limefits better
  3. Avocadofits better
  4. Applethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against rabbit, parsley, turnip, carrot, onion, butter, flour. 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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