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
Cut the rabbit into joints and wash it well.
Slice the pork and add it to a saucepan with the rabbit and sliced onions.
Season with pepper and coarse sea salt, then cover with water.
Simmer and thicken
Simmer gently for 30 minutes to 1.5 hours, depending on the rabbit's size.
Thicken the gravy with 1 tablespoon of flour for every pint of gravy.
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.
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Rabbit + porktop 6% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together832 recipes
Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).
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Onion + porktop 10% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together18,214 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
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Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together68,474 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
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Rabbit + oniontop 13% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together1,292 recipes
Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).
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Rabbit + flourtop 13% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked 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, gentle simmering.
- Flour
- Thickens the cooking liquid into a gravy as it is stirred in.
- Onions
- Add sweetness and flavour to the broth as they cook down.
The step that matters
Simmer gently for 30 minutes to 1.5 hours. Rapid boiling toughens the meat fibres and can break the rabbit apart, while gentle simmering lets connective tissue soften slowly. Judge doneness by the rabbit's size, since larger joints need the longer time.
Swap the onion
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (rabbit, flour, pepper, pork):
- Capsicumfits better
- Mustardfits better
- Potatofits better
- Onionthe original
Fit is the average pairing score against rabbit, flour, pepper, pork. 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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