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Rabbit En Casserole

A rabbit casserole cooked with onions, carrots, suet, and stock.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and carrot are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 21,601 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Rabbit En Casserole

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the rabbit

  1. Roll the rabbit joints in seasoned flour.

  2. Heat the suet in a deep frying pan until boiling.

  3. Dip each piece of rabbit in the hot suet.

  4. Fry the rabbit pieces lightly.

Make the sauce

  1. Mix 1 tablespoon of flour with a little water to make a smooth paste.

  2. Pour 2 cups of boiling stock over the flour paste.

  3. Boil the stock mixture in the frying pan.

Assemble and cook

  1. Arrange the fried rabbit in a casserole dish with sliced onions and whole carrots.

  2. Pour the stock mixture over the rabbit in the casserole.

  3. Cook gently for at least 1 hour.

  4. Serve from the casserole.

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 + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

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

  2. Rabbit + oniontop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,292 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Flour + carrottop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,029 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Rabbit + flourtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetaldehyde (pungent, ethereal).

  5. Rabbit + carrottop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together301 recipes

    Shared aroma: sabinene (woody, terpenic).

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 long, gentle cooking.
Seasoned flour
Coats the rabbit so it browns during frying and helps thicken the cooking liquid.
Block suet
Adds fat for frying the rabbit, giving flavour and richer browning.
Onions
Add sweetness and aroma as they soften and flavour the stock during cooking.
Carrots
Add natural sweetness and body to the casserole.
Flour
Thickens the stock into a smooth sauce that coats the rabbit.

The step that matters

Make the smooth flour paste before adding the stock. Flour mixed with cold water first disperses evenly; added directly to hot liquid it forms lumps that stay in the sauce and cannot be whisked out easily.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Turnipfits better
  2. Parsnipfits better
  3. Arrowrootfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against rabbit, flour, carrot. 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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