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Stewed Rabbit

A stew of rabbit, bacon or pork, onions, and seasonings simmered in water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Rabbit and pork work together. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 832 recipes. Both carry decanal, which smells soap, orange peel. The science ↓

Stewed Rabbit

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the rabbit into joints.

  2. Wash the joints in warm water.

  3. Dry the joints well.

  4. Sprinkle the joints with a little flour.

  5. Heat the dripping in a saucepan.

  6. Add the rabbit joints to the dripping.

  7. Brown the rabbit joints slightly.

  8. Peel and wash the onions.

  9. Slice the onions into rings.

  10. Add the sliced onions to the rabbit.

  11. Fry the onions with the rabbit.

  12. Drain the dripping.

Stew

  1. Add hot water to cover the rabbit and bacon or pork.

  2. Bring the mixture to a boil.

  3. Skim off any scum.

  4. Let the stew simmer for 1 hour.

  5. In a bowl, mix the flour, salt, pepper, and sauce with a little water to make a paste.

  6. Pour the paste into the saucepan with the rabbit.

  7. Stir the mixture.

  8. Let the stew simmer for another 30 minutes.

  9. Stir the stew once or twice.

  10. Serve hot on a 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 + porktop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together832 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  2. Pork + oniontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,214 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. 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
Provides the main meat, which becomes tender through slow simmering.
Flour
Dusted on the joints and mixed into the paste, it thickens the stewing liquid.
Onions
Fried with the rabbit, they add sweetness and savoury depth to the stew.
Dripping
Fat for browning the joints, carrying flavour through the dish.
Bacon or pork
Adds smoky, savoury fat to the cooking liquid.

The step that matters

Brown the rabbit joints slightly. Browning builds savoury flavour through the Maillard reaction. Joints must be dry first, because surface moisture steams them instead of browning them.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against rabbit, pork, flour, sauce, 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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