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Rabbit Stewed

A stew of rabbit pieces, onion, heart, liver, and head simmered in butter or dripping with water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 68,474 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Rabbit Stewed

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wash the rabbit well and dry it thoroughly inside and out.

  2. Cut the rabbit into joints.

  3. Remove the head, the heart and the liver.

  4. Rub each piece with flour to dry it further.

Brown and stew

  1. In a stew-pan, heat the butter or dripping until hot.

  2. Fry the pieces of rabbit until browned.

  3. Add the water to the pan.

  4. Add the chopped onion to the pan.

  5. Add the heart and the liver to the pan.

  6. Wash the head and add it to the stew.

  7. Cover and stew slowly for 1 hour, stirring occasionally.

Serve

  1. Dish neatly and pour the sauce over.

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

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

  2. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Rabbit + flourtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetaldehyde (pungent, ethereal).

  5. Onion + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Rabbit
Provides the meat, which becomes tender through slow stewing in liquid.
Flour
Coats the meat to dry its surface, aiding browning and thickening the sauce.
Butter or dripping
Fat that carries heat for browning the pieces and adds richness to the dish.
Onion
Softens and sweetens as it cooks, adding aroma to the sauce.

The step that matters

Fry the pieces until browned. The pieces must be dry and fried in hot fat so they brown rather than steam. Browning builds deep, savoury flavour through the Maillard reaction, which the slow stew then carries into the sauce.

Swap the onion

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

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

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