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A LA Francaise

A rabbit stew cooked with butter, onions, bacon, ham, herbs, stock, and vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Thyme and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and 9,057 recipes mention both. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

The recipe

Ingredients

Contains: milk (auto-detected from the ingredients and method; we can miss things, so check labels)

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wash, dry, and joint the rabbit.

  2. Heat the butter in a stewpan.

  3. Slice the onions and dice the bacon.

Brown and braise

  1. Fry the onions and bacon with the rabbit until browned.

  2. Add the ham cut into strips, herbs, and a few white peppercorns tied in muslin.

  3. Pour in the stock and vinegar, then simmer for two hours.

  4. Adjust cooking time if the rabbit is older.

  5. Season just before serving.

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 aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

  1. Thyme + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together34,118 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Pepper + thymetop 3% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together11,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  4. Onion + thymetop 5% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together11,172 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Rabbit + hamtop 5% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together273 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

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 becomes tender during slow simmering.
Butter
Carries heat for frying and adds richness and browning to the meat and onions.
Onions
Soften and sweeten as they cook, adding body to the sauce.
Bacon
Renders fat and adds savoury, smoky flavour to the frying stage.
Ham
Adds salty, meaty depth to the braising liquid.
Stock
Forms the moist cooking liquid that tenderises the rabbit during simmering.

The step that matters

Simmer gently for two hours. Rabbit is lean and can turn dry and stringy if boiled hard. A slow, gentle simmer breaks down connective tissue slowly, keeping the meat moist and tender. Older rabbits need longer cooking because their tissue is tougher.

Flavor stand-ins for the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (rabbit, butter, ham, pepper, thyme, parsley, vinegar):

  1. Carrotbetter flavor fit
  2. Potatobetter flavor fit
  3. Capsicumbetter flavor fit
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against rabbit, butter, ham, pepper, thyme, parsley, vinegar. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).

“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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