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Stewed Rabbit

A rabbit stew cooked with onions, butter, stock, flour, catsup or port, and garnished with bacon rolls.

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 ↓

Stewed Rabbit

Ingredients

Directions

Brown the rabbit

  1. Heat butter or dripping in a pan and fry rabbit joints until browned.

  2. Add sliced onions and a bunch of herbs.

  3. Cook until the onions are soft.

Make the gravy

  1. Pour in warm stock or water and simmer gently for about two hours until rabbit is tender.

  2. Thicken the gravy with flour.

  3. Season with salt and pepper.

  4. Stir in catsup or port.

Serve

  1. Serve the rabbit on a plate.

  2. Pour the gravy over it.

  3. Garnish with small rolls of bacon.

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. Butter + flourtop 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).

Butter and flour 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
Browned first, then simmered until tender, forming the main body of the stew.
Onions
Softened in the fat to add sweetness and savoury depth to the gravy.
Flour
Thickens the stock into a smooth gravy.
Butter or dripping
Carries the frying and adds richness to the browned rabbit.
Catsup or port
Adds acidity or sweetness and depth of flavour to the gravy.

The step that matters

Simmer gently until the rabbit is tender. Rabbit is lean and its connective tissue needs slow, gentle heat to soften. A hard boil toughens the meat and can make the gravy cloudy, so keep the liquid at a quiet simmer for the full time.

Swap the onion

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

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

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