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Stewed with Mushrooms

A rabbit stew cooked with anchovies or essence, milk, water, onion, butter, flour, wine, mushrooms, and lemon, served with liver forcemeat balls.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Stewed with Mushrooms

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Place the onions in the center of a dish.

  2. Arrange the rabbit around the onions.

  3. Boil the anchovies or essence in milk and water with pepper, salt, and the onion.

  4. Cut up the rabbit and stew it gently until cooked through.

Make the gravy

  1. Strain the gravy.

  2. Add butter rolled in flour, wine, and mushrooms.

  3. Toss everything together.

Finish and serve

  1. Squeeze lemon juice over the rabbit or pour lemon pickle on top.

  2. Serve with the sauce and liver made into forcemeat-balls.

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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Butter + mushroomtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

  3. Wine + mushroomtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,632 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methoxy-4-propylphenol (allspice, anise).

  4. Onion + mushroomtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,626 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  5. Milk + mushroomtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,231 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-hexanal (fruit).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Rabbit
Forms the main body of the dish and becomes tender as it stews gently.
Butter and flour
Rolled together, the flour thickens the gravy and the butter adds richness.
Milk
Forms the creamy base of the boiled sauce, adding richness and body.
Wine
Adds acidity and depth of flavour to the gravy.
Mushrooms
Add earthy flavour and a soft, moist texture to the gravy.
Anchovies or essence
Add a savoury, salty depth that enriches the sauce.

The step that matters

Stew the rabbit gently until cooked through. Rabbit is very lean, so high heat or overcooking dries and toughens the meat. Gentle, moist stewing keeps the fibres tender while the heat cooks it through.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (milk, rabbit, butter, flour, wine, mushroom, lemon):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, rabbit, butter, flour, wine, mushroom, lemon. 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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