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Rabbit Stewed

A rabbit stew made with rabbit pieces, onion, flour, butter, water, heart, liver, and seasonings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 the rabbit

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

  2. Cut the rabbit into joints, removing the head, heart, and liver.

  3. Rub flour over each piece to dry it further.

Cook the stew

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

  2. Fry the rabbit pieces until browned.

  3. Add water, chopped onion, and the heart and liver to the pan.

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

  5. Cover and simmer slowly for 1 hour, stirring occasionally.

Serve

  1. Serve neatly, pouring the sauce over the rabbit.

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. Rabbit + livertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together233 recipes

    Shared aroma: geraniol (rose, geranium).

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
Forms the main body of the stew, providing the meat that is browned and simmered until tender.
Flour
Dries the rabbit surface so it browns better, and lightly thickens the sauce.
Butter or dripping
Carries the heat for frying and adds richness and browning to the rabbit.
Onion
Adds savoury sweetness and aroma as it softens into the sauce.
Rabbit heart and liver
Adds deeper, richer flavour to the cooking liquid as it simmers.

The step that matters

Fry the rabbit until browned. Browning the surface before simmering builds deeper flavour through the Maillard reaction. Rabbit is lean, so pieces that are pale or crowded in the pan will steam rather than brown.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Mustardfits about as well
  3. Chivefits about as well
  4. Onionthe original

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