Skip to main content
Main

Stewed Rabbit and Onions

A stew of rabbit and onions thickened with flour and milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Rabbit and onion are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,292 recipes. Both carry decanal, which smells soap, orange peel. The science ↓

Stewed Rabbit and Onions

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the rabbit

  1. Skin the rabbit by making a slit underneath and removing the insides.

  2. Break the first joint of each leg and cut off at the joint.

  3. Draw the skin off starting from the hind legs, then over the fore legs and head, and remove the eyes.

  4. Cut the rabbit into joints with a sharp knife.

  5. Wash the joints quickly in cold water.

Stew

  1. Place the rabbit joints in a saucepan with hot water and onions.

  2. Stew slowly for about one hour.

  3. Remove the onions from the saucepan.

  4. Chop the onions on a board.

  5. Blend the flour smoothly with the milk.

  6. Take the pieces of rabbit out onto a plate.

  7. Stir the flour mixture into the saucepan.

  8. Stir until it boils.

  9. Add the seasoning and chopped onion.

  10. Return the pieces of rabbit to the saucepan to warm.

  11. Serve on a hot dish.

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

    Shared aroma: acetaldehyde (pungent, ethereal).

  3. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Onion + flourtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together32,460 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Rabbit + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together284 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

Flour and milk barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Rabbit
Provides the meat that is stewed until tender in the sauce.
Flour
Blended with milk and stirred in to thicken the stewing liquid into a sauce.
Milk
Mixed with flour to form a smooth liquid that thickens the sauce when it boils.
Onions
Soften during stewing to add sweetness and flavour to the sauce.

The step that matters

Stir the flour mixture into the saucepan. Flour mixed with milk must be blended smooth before adding, and the mixture should be stirred until it boils so the starch thickens and no lumps remain.

Swap the onion

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

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

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

You might also like

Rabbit PattiesRabbit Patties6 recipesTomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipes