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Lapereau Au Jambon. — Young Rabbit with Ham

A stew of young rabbit pieces larded with bacon, cooked with wine, stock, parsley, green onions, and served with ham.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Lapereau Au Jambon. — Young Rabbit with Ham

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the rabbit

  1. Lard the rabbit pieces with fat bacon.

Stew and finish

  1. In a pot, stew the rabbit with oil, white wine, parsley, green onions, stock, salt, and pepper.

  2. Strain the remaining sauce through a sieve and skim off the grease.

  3. Serve the sauce over the rabbit and ham.

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. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  2. Parsley + oniontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

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

  3. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  4. White wine + oniontop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,535 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  5. Rabbit + oniontop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,292 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Young rabbit
Forms the main meat, which becomes tender through slow stewing in liquid.
Fat bacon
Adds fat that keeps the lean rabbit moist as it cooks.
White wine
Adds acidity and aroma that brighten the stewed sauce.
Stock
Provides the liquid base for the stew and the sauce.
Green onions
Add mild onion aroma to the stewing liquid.

The step that matters

Skim off the grease. Rendered fat floats on the stewing liquid and can make the sauce greasy and heavy. Removing it after straining leaves a cleaner, lighter sauce.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (rabbit, white wine, parsley, pepper):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Carrotfits better
  3. Capsicumfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against rabbit, white wine, parsley, pepper. 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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