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Rabbit, Stewed, Brown

A slow‑cooked rabbit stew with onion, celery, herbs, and browned flour thickening.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,451 recipes. Both carry ethyl octanoate, which smells fruity, wine. The science ↓

Rabbit, Stewed, Brown

Oven, in the book's wordsA slack oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wash, dry, and cut up the rabbit, dividing the legs if large.

  2. Brown the joints in a little fat for added flavor, if desired.

Simmer and finish

  1. Add plain stock and the chopped vegetables, including the onion, then include a bunch of herbs and a couple of cloves.

  2. Cook very slowly for 1 to 2 hours, depending on the age and size of the rabbit.

  3. Thicken the sauce with browned flour and adjust seasoning to taste.

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. Pepper + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  2. Celery + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Celery + clovetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,668 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-decalactone (peach, creamy).

  4. Onion + celerytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,518 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 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 meat that becomes tender during long, slow cooking.
Browned flour
Thickens the stock into a sauce as its starch swells when heated.
Onion
Adds savory sweetness and aroma as it softens in the stock.
Plain stock
Forms the cooking liquid that carries flavor and becomes the sauce.

The step that matters

Cook very slowly. Low, gentle heat lets the connective tissue in rabbit break down slowly, keeping the meat tender rather than tough and stringy. Rapid boiling toughens the muscle fibres and can make the stock cloudy.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Carrotfits better
  2. Turnipfits better
  3. Mustardfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against rabbit, celery, flour, pepper, clove. 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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