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French Stewed Rabbit

A stew of rabbit pieces braised with bacon, wine, herbs, and onions.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and thyme match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,057 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

French Stewed Rabbit

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Hang the wild rabbit for a short time to tenderize if using one.

  2. Melt the butter in a stew pan.

  3. Add the diced bacon and cook for 3 minutes, then remove the bacon.

  4. Add the rabbit pieces and brown them without covering the pan.

  5. Dredge the browned rabbit with flour and stir well.

Stew

  1. Add hot water or stock.

  2. Return the bacon to the pan.

  3. Pour in the white wine or vinegar.

  4. Season with salt and pepper.

  5. Add the onion and the bouquet of herbs.

  6. Cover the stew pan tightly and place a heavy object on top to trap steam.

  7. Simmer gently for 1.5 hours, turning the rabbit pieces once or twice.

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. Parsley + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

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

  3. Pepper + thymetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,585 recipes

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

  4. Onion + thymetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,171 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Rabbit
Provides the meat that becomes tender during long, slow simmering.
Bacon
Renders fat into the pan that flavours the browning and the stew.
Butter
Fat for browning the rabbit, adding richness and flavour to the sauce.
Flour
Coats the browned rabbit so the cooking liquid thickens into a sauce.
White wine or vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour and helps balance the rich sauce.
Onion
Softens during simmering and adds sweetness and savoury depth to the sauce.

The step that matters

Browning the rabbit without covering the pan. Searing the meat in an uncovered pan creates browned flavour through the Maillard reaction. Covering it would trap steam and leave the pieces pale and steamed rather than browned.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against rabbit, butter, flour, wine, pepper, parsley, thyme. 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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