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Stewed Rabbit

A rabbit stew with salt pork, onions, bay leaf, claret, and parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Stewed Rabbit

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Dredge the rabbit pieces in flour.

  2. In a skillet, brown the rabbit with the salt pork.

Make the sauce and stew

  1. Remove the rabbit and pork, then make a brown sauce with flour to half fill the skillet.

  2. Return the rabbit to the skillet, add the chopped onions, bay leaf, salt, and pepper.

  3. Cover and stew slowly for 1.5 hours.

  4. Just before serving, add the claret.

Serve

  1. Garnish with finely chopped parsley.

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 + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  2. Rabbit + porktop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together832 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

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

  5. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Rabbit
Is the main protein, becoming tender through slow, covered stewing.
Salt pork
Browning in the skillet renders fat and adds savory flavor to the dish.
Flour
Dredging and the brown sauce thicken the liquid and help the rabbit brown.
Onions
Soften during stewing and add sweetness and depth to the sauce.
Claret
Adds acidity and wine flavor to the sauce when added near the end.

The step that matters

Stew slowly under cover. Gentle, covered simmering breaks down the tough connective tissue in rabbit. Boiling hard or uncovered cooking can toughen the meat and reduce the sauce unevenly.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Turnipfits better
  3. Carrotfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against rabbit, pork, flour, pepper, parsley. 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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