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Wild Rabbits

A hearty stew of rabbit, pickled pork, onions, and turnip simmered and thickened with corn flour or oatmeal.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and turnip match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,585 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Wild Rabbits

Ingredients

Directions

Make the broth

  1. Simmer pickled pork, onions, and turnip in hot water for 1 hour.

  2. Wash the rabbit and add it with cold water to the stew-pan; simmer for another hour.

  3. Remove rabbit, pork, and vegetables; cut meat from rabbit and set aside for later use.

  4. Fry sliced onions until moderately brown; add to broth with rabbit head and bones.

  5. Simmer for 2 hours, skimming the surface occasionally.

Finish and serve

  1. Thicken broth with corn flour or oatmeal mixed with cold water; add salt if needed.

  2. Strain through a fine sieve, return to stewpan for a few minutes, and serve hot.

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 + turniptop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Pork + rabbittop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together832 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Pork + corntop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,069 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  4. Pork + oniontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,214 recipes

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

  5. Turnip + corntop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together208 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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 and, with its bones and head, flavours the broth.
Pickled pork
Adds salty, savoury flavour to the broth during the first simmer.
Onions
Add sweetness and depth, especially when fried until browned.
Corn flour or oatmeal
Thickens the broth as its starch swells with heat.

The step that matters

Thickening the broth. Starch must be mixed with cold water first so it disperses evenly, then cooked with the hot broth. Added dry or to hot liquid directly, it clumps and leaves lumps.

Swap the turnip

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pork, onion, rabbit, corn):

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Mustardfits better
  4. Turnipthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pork, onion, rabbit, corn. 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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