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Stewed Rabbit

A stew of rabbit pieces seasoned with cayenne pepper, salt, parsley, and finished with butter, flour, cream, and nutmeg.

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

Stew the rabbit

  1. Season the rabbit pieces with Cayenne pepper, salt, and chopped parsley.

  2. Place them in a stewpan and add warm water or broth.

  3. Stew over low heat until the rabbit is tender.

  4. When halfway done, add bits of butter rolled in flour.

Finish and serve

  1. Just before serving, stir in thick cream and grated nutmeg.

  2. Do not let the mixture boil after adding the cream.

  3. Serve the rabbit on a hot dish and pour the gravy over it.

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. Parsley + nutmegtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,062 recipes

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

  3. Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

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

  4. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  5. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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 stewing in liquid.
Butter and flour
Rolled together and added mid-stew, they thicken the liquid into a gravy.
Thick cream
Adds richness and a smooth, velvety body to the finished gravy.
Warm water or broth
Forms the cooking liquid that gently braises the rabbit and becomes the gravy base.

The step that matters

Do not let the mixture boil after adding the cream. Cream can curdle or separate when boiled, which leaves the gravy grainy and thin instead of smooth and rich. Keeping it just hot preserves a silky texture.

Swap the parsley

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (rabbit, pepper, butter, flour, cream, nutmeg):

  1. Cinnamonfits about as well
  2. Parsleythe original
  3. Tarragonfits about as well
  4. Turmericfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against rabbit, pepper, butter, flour, cream, nutmeg. 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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