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Stewed Rabbits

A stew of young rabbit joints browned with bacon, onions and mushrooms, then simmered in a thickened sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Stewed Rabbits

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the rabbit into small joints and set aside.

  2. Cut the bacon into 1-inch cubes.

Brown the meat

  1. Melt the butter in a clean stewpan.

  2. Add the bacon and fry until lightly browned.

  3. Add the rabbit pieces and fry until nicely browned, stirring constantly.

  4. Dredge in the flour and mix well.

  5. Gradually add water or stock, stirring until the meat is just covered.

Stew and serve

  1. Season with pepper, salt, and lemon peel.

  2. Simmer slowly for 20 minutes.

  3. Add the blanched onions and mushrooms.

  4. Once the rabbit is cooked, remove it and arrange it on a dish.

  5. Boil the sauce until it coats the back of a spoon, then pour it 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. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. Mushroom + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

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

  3. Onion + mushroomtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,626 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Mushroom + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,580 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
Forms the main meat, which becomes tender as it simmers slowly in the liquid.
Streaky bacon
Renders fat that browns the rabbit and adds savoury flavour to the stew.
Butter or sweet dripping
Fat for frying that carries browning and adds rich flavour.
Flour
Dredged onto the meat to thicken the cooking liquid into a sauce.
Button onions
Add sweetness and soften during the stew, adding body to the sauce.
Mushrooms
Add earthy flavour and moisture to the stewed sauce.

The step that matters

Browning the rabbit before adding liquid. Frying the meat until nicely browned builds deep flavour through the Maillard reaction. Pale meat added to liquid makes a flatter, greyer stew.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Spinachfits better
  3. Asparagusfits better
  4. Onionthe original

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