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Rabbit En Gibelotte

A rabbit stew with bacon, butter, flour, broth, wine, onions, mushrooms, and seasonings served with toasted bread.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: White wine and mushroom are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,765 recipes. Both carry ethyl octanoate, which smells fruity. The science ↓

Rabbit En Gibelotte

Ingredients

Directions

Brown and braise

  1. Brown the bacon in butter in a stew-pan, then remove it.

  2. Add the rabbit to the pan and brown it all over.

  3. Return the bacon to the pan.

  4. Sprinkle flour over the rabbit and gradually moisten with broth and white wine.

  5. Season with pepper, salt, and bouquet garni.

  6. Add small onions and button mushrooms.

Serve

  1. Serve with fried or toasted bread around the dish.

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. White wine + mushroomtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,765 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity).

  2. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

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

  4. Butter + white winetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,083 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  5. Mushroom + breadtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,536 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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 browns and becomes tender as it cooks in liquid.
Bacon
Adds savory fat and smoky flavor that seasons the butter and the rabbit.
Butter
Browns the bacon and rabbit, adding fat and rich, nutty flavor.
Flour
Thickens the cooking liquid into a light sauce as it is moistened.
White wine
Adds acidity and aroma that balance the richness of the meat and fat.
Broth
Forms the braising liquid that keeps the rabbit moist and builds the sauce.

The step that matters

Browning the rabbit. Searing the rabbit well in butter and bacon fat develops browned, savory flavors through the Maillard reaction. Crowding the pan or not drying the meat causes steaming, which leaves the flavor flat.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Asparagusfits better
  3. Capsicumfits about as well
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against rabbit, butter, flour, white wine, pepper, mushroom, bread. 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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