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To Stew Rabbits

A stew of rabbit pieces browned in butter, then cooked with onions, ketchup, vinegar, pepper, salt, and hot water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and onion 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 ↓

To Stew Rabbits

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the rabbit

  1. Wash the rabbits well and cut them into pieces.

  2. Scald the pieces for a few minutes.

Brown and stew

  1. Melt the butter in a pan and fry the rabbits until slightly browned.

  2. Dust in the flour and then add the hot water.

  3. Add the sliced onions, ketchup, vinegar, pepper, and salt.

  4. Stew slowly for two hours.

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 + oniontop 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. Flour + ketchuptop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,435 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

Rabbits
Form the main body of the stew and provide the meat that becomes tender during slow cooking.
Butter
Adds fat for frying, helping the rabbit pieces brown and carry flavour.
Flour
Dusted onto the browned pieces, it thickens the cooking liquid into a stew sauce.
Onions
Soften during the long stew and add sweetness and body to the sauce.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the rich, slow-cooked sauce.

The step that matters

Stew slowly for two hours. Rabbit meat is lean and can turn dry or tough if cooked hard or fast. A gentle, low simmer breaks down connective tissue slowly, leaving the meat tender and the sauce well blended.

Swap the onion

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

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

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