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Spiced Rabbit

A rabbit stewed in vinegar, sugar, spices, and bay leaf, served with a brown gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,189 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Spiced Rabbit

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the rabbit

  1. Soak the rabbit in salt water for 2 hours.

  2. Place the rabbit in an earthen jar.

  3. Cover the jar with vinegar.

  4. Add sugar, clove, cinnamon, and pepper berries to the vinegar.

  5. Let the rabbit soak overnight.

Cook and serve

  1. Boil the rabbit in the soaking liquid for 1.5 hours.

  2. Make a brown gravy and add a bay leaf to it.

  3. Thicken the liquid.

  4. Combine the gravy with the rabbit.

  5. Serve.

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. Clove + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  3. Cinnamon + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,890 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

  4. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Vinegar + peppertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,814 recipes

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

Sugar and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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 after soaking and boiling.
Vinegar
Acidity that softens the meat and flavours the soaking liquid.
Sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the sharpness of the vinegar.

The step that matters

Boil the rabbit in the soaking liquid. Boiling for the full 1.5 hours is what makes lean rabbit meat tender. Keep it at a gentle boil so the meat cooks through without drying or falling apart.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (rabbit, vinegar, sugar, cinnamon, pepper):

  1. Nutmegfits about as well
  2. Allspicefits about as well
  3. Clovethe original
  4. Tarragonfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against rabbit, vinegar, sugar, cinnamon, pepper. 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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