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Rabbit Stew

A stew of rabbit pieces fried in butter, thickened with flour, served with gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Rabbit Stew

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the rabbit

  1. Cut the rabbits into quarters.

  2. Dredge the rabbit quarters in flour.

  3. Fry the floured rabbit quarters in butter.

Stew

  1. Place the rabbit quarters in a stew pan with good gravy.

  2. Season the stew with pepper, salt, and sweet herbs.

  3. Cover the stew.

  4. Let the stew cook until the rabbit is tender.

Finish and serve

  1. Remove the rabbit to a deep dish.

  2. Thicken the gravy with flour and butter.

  3. Pour the thickened gravy over the rabbit.

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. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Rabbit + flourtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetaldehyde (pungent, ethereal).

  3. Rabbit + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,448 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Rabbit + peppertop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,334 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-pentylpyridine (fat).

  5. Flour + peppertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter 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

Rabbits
Provides the main meat, which becomes tender through slow stewing in liquid.
Flour
Coats the rabbit to help brown it and thickens the gravy.
Butter
Fats used for frying the floured rabbit and enriching the thickened gravy.
Good gravy
Liquid that moistens the rabbit and carries flavor during the long stew.

The step that matters

Let the stew cook until the rabbit is tender. Rabbit is lean and its connective tissue needs long, moist, gentle cooking to soften. Cooking too hard or too briefly leaves the meat tough or dry.

“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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