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Ragout of Rabbit

A rabbit ragout made with bacon, carrot, onion, flour, and water or stock, simmered for two hours.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,555 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Ragout of Rabbit

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wash and clean the rabbit, cut it into neat joints, and dry with a cloth.

Brown the ingredients

  1. Slice the bacon and fry it in a stewpan until crispy, then remove it.

  2. Fry the rabbit in the same pan until light brown, then remove it.

  3. Add the chopped vegetables to the pan and fry until pale brown.

  4. Stir in the flour and fry until it turns a deep golden color.

Stew

  1. Add the water or stock and stir until boiling.

  2. Return the rabbit and bacon to the pan, cover, and stew gently for two 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. Carrot + peppertop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,555 recipes

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

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

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

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Carrot + flourtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,029 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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.
Bacon
Adds fat and savory flavor to the pan and the sauce.
Flour
Browned in the fat, it thickens the stock into a sauce.
Onion
Softens and sweetens as it browns, building the base flavor.
Carrot
Adds sweetness and body to the stew as it softens.

The step that matters

Browning the flour. Frying the flour in the fat until deep golden cooks out raw starch taste and builds color and nutty flavor before the liquid is added. Stirring keeps it from scorching and lumping when the stock goes in.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Turnipfits better
  2. Parsnipfits better
  3. Spinachfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against rabbit, carrot, flour, 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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