Skip to main content
Main

Stewed Hare or Rabbit

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

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 the hare or rabbit thoroughly.

  2. Soak the hare or rabbit.

  3. Wipe it dry.

  4. Flour the meat.

Brown and stew

  1. Brown the meat slightly in the butter with the bits of ham.

  2. Gradually pour in the gravy.

  3. Stew the meat gently for 1½ to 2 hours.

  4. Add salt if needed after the first half hour.

  5. After 1 hour, add the lemon rind.

Finish

  1. 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. Rice + mushroomtop 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
The main meat; long gentle stewing turns its tough fibres tender.
Butter
Fat that browns the floured meat and carries flavour into the dish.
Bits of lean ham
Cured meat that adds a salty, savoury depth as it browns with the butter.
Gravy
Liquid that moistens and slowly cooks the meat, forming the sauce.
Rice flour
Starch that thickens the stewing liquid into a smooth sauce.
Mushroom ketchup
Adds a rich, savoury umami flavour to the sauce.

The step that matters

Stirring in the rice flour mixture. Flour clumps when dropped dry into hot liquid. Mixing it first with the ketchup spreads the starch evenly, so it thickens the sauce smoothly instead of forming lumps.

Swap the lemon

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

  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, rice, flour, mushroom, ketchup. 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.

More stewed rabbit recipes

in Milk 8French 4 See all 67 →

You might also like

Lemon SauceLemon Sauce236 recipesRice FrittersRice Fritters84 recipesMushroom SoupMushroom Soup60 recipesSteamed RiceSteamed Rice48 recipes