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Stewed Rabbit

A rabbit stew with mushrooms, parsley, port wine, and cream, served with sliced lemon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Stewed Rabbit

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Soak the rabbit in water for 1 hour.

Stew and strain

  1. Place the rabbit in a stew pan with mushrooms, parsley, salt, pepper, and mace.

  2. Pour in the port wine and stew gently for 30 minutes.

  3. Remove the rabbit and strain the sauce.

Finish and serve

  1. Reduce the sauce over heat, then add the cream.

  2. Return the rabbit to the sauce and heat without boiling for 15 minutes.

  3. Serve the rabbit in the sauce with sliced lemon.

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 + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

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

  2. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  3. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  4. Mushroom + port winetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together570 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Mushroom + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,580 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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 through slow stewing in liquid.
Port wine
Forms the braising liquid, adding flavour and body to the sauce as it reduces.
Mushrooms
Add earthy flavour and moisture to the sauce during stewing.
Thick cream
Enriches the reduced sauce, giving it a smoother texture and rounder richness.

The step that matters

Return the rabbit without boiling. Boiling a rich, creamy sauce can cause it to separate and toughen the meat, so it should only be heated gently.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (rabbit, mushroom, parsley, pepper, port wine, cream, lemon):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Marjoramfits better
  3. Tarragonfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against rabbit, mushroom, parsley, pepper, port wine, cream, lemon. 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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