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Stewed Hare or Rabbit

A slow-cooked hare or rabbit stew with butter, ham, gravy, lemon rind, mushroom ketchup, rice flour, mace, and cayenne.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and mushroom are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 12,525 recipes. Both carry trans-2-decenal, which smells waxy, orange. The science ↓

Stewed Hare or Rabbit

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wash and soak the hare or rabbit thoroughly, then wipe it dry.

Stew

  1. Flour and brown the meat slightly in the butter with bits of lean ham.

  2. Gradually pour in the gravy and stew the meat gently for 1½ to 2 hours.

  3. Add salt if needed after 30 minutes of stewing.

  4. After 30 minutes, add the lemon rind.

  5. Ten minutes before serving, stir in the rice flour mixed with mushroom ketchup, mace, and cayenne.

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. Butter + mushroomtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

  2. Mushroom + ricetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,515 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

  3. Lemon + ricetop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,366 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

  4. Rabbit + ricetop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together252 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Hare or rabbit
Provides the meat that becomes tender during long, gentle stewing.
Butter
Fat that browns the floured meat and carries flavour into the stew.
Gravy
Liquid that braises the meat and forms the body of the sauce.
Rice flour
Thickens the stewing liquid into a smooth, glossy sauce when stirred in near the end.
Mushroom ketchup
Adds savoury depth and umami to the thickened sauce.

The step that matters

Stir in the rice flour near the end. Flour added directly to hot liquid can clump, so it is mixed smoothly with liquid first and stirred in while the stew is still simmering gently. This lets starch swell evenly and thicken the sauce without lumps, and the sauce should not be boiled hard afterwards.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (rabbit, butter, ham, mushroom, ketchup, rice, flour):

  1. Lemonthe original
  2. Coconutfits about as well
  3. Applefits less well
  4. Raisinfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against rabbit, butter, ham, mushroom, ketchup, rice, flour. 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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