Skip to main content
Main

Rabbit in Slices

A rabbit stew made with sliced rabbit, pickled pork, onion, flour, butter, and force‑meat balls.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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

Prepare the rabbit

  1. Cut the rabbit into slices.

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

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

Make the gravy

  1. Add enough water to cover the rabbit.

  2. Season with pepper and coarse sea salt to taste.

  3. Thicken the mixture with flour and butter.

  4. Add force-meat balls and retain the fat from the frying pan.

  5. Simmer until the gravy is as thick as 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 during slow simmering in the gravy.
Pickled pork
Adds salty, savoury fat and flavour that carries into the gravy.
Onion
Adds sweetness and aroma as it browns in the frying pan.
Flour
Thickens the liquid into a smooth gravy as it cooks.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, giving the gravy a smoother mouthfeel.

The step that matters

Thicken the mixture with flour and butter. Flour must be cooked in the liquid long enough to swell and set the gravy; adding it to a hot, stirred mixture helps prevent lumps, and simmering then lets the starch thicken fully.

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.

You might also like

Pork CakePork Cake107 recipesRoast PorkRoast Pork82 recipesMeat CroquettesMeat Croquettes52 recipesMeatballsMeatballs37 recipes