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Rabbit in Slices

Rabbit in slices is a stew of rabbit slices with pickled pork, onion, water, salt, pepper, thickened with flour and butter, served with force‑meat balls.

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 ↓

Rabbit in Slices

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Fry the rabbit slices with pickled pork and chopped onion until browned.

  2. Remove from the frying pan and place in a stewpan.

  3. Add enough water to cover the rabbit, then season with salt and pepper.

  4. Thicken the mixture with flour and butter, keeping the fat from the frying pan.

  5. Add force-meat balls and let the gravy thicken to the consistency of rich cream.

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. Pork + meattop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,208 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  5. Rabbit + meattop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together315 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

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 as it simmers in the liquid.
Pickled pork
Adds salty, savoury fat that flavours the frying and the gravy.
Onion
Softens and sweetens as it fries, adding aroma to the gravy.
Flour
Thickens the cooking liquid into a gravy as it is heated.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, and helps the flour thicken the gravy smoothly.

The step that matters

Thickening the gravy with flour and butter. Flour must be cooked with the fat so its starch swells evenly without lumps. Adding it to hot liquid straight away, or with too much pan fat, can make the gravy greasy or uneven.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against rabbit, pork, pepper, flour, butter, meat. 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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