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Wilo Rabbits

A stew of mutton with barley and root vegetables.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Leek and turnip match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,046 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Wilo Rabbits

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the meat into small pieces.

  2. Wash the barley and cut the vegetables into dice.

Make the stew

  1. Put the meat into a stew-pan with the cold water and 1 teaspoon of salt, then cook gently for 2 hours.

  2. Add the vegetables and barley to the broth and cook for another hour.

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. Leek + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,046 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Carrot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

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

  3. Carrot + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  4. Leek + barleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together142 recipes

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

  5. Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Scrag end of mutton
Provides the meat and rich flavour that the broth is built on.
Scotch barley
Thickens the broth slightly and adds a soft, chewy texture as it cooks.
Leek
Adds a mild onion-like sweetness and aroma to the broth.

The step that matters

Cooking the meat gently for 2 hours. Gentle, steady heat lets collagen in the scrag end break down slowly into tender meat and a flavourful broth. A hard boil toughens the meat and makes the broth cloudy.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (mutton, leek, carrot, turnip, celery, parsley, barley):

  1. Parsnipfits better
  2. Lettucefits better
  3. Shallotfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, leek, carrot, turnip, celery, parsley, barley. 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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