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Stewed Rabbit, Larded

A rabbit stewed with bacon, broth, herbs, and a butter‑flour gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Stewed Rabbit, Larded

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the rabbit

  1. Wash the rabbit thoroughly and cut it into quarters.

  2. Lard the rabbit quarters with strips of bacon and fry them until browned.

Stew and thicken

  1. Place the rabbit in a saucepan with the broth, herbs, salt, and pepper.

  2. Simmer gently until the rabbit is tender.

  3. Strain the gravy and thicken it with butter and flour, then bring to a boil.

Serve

  1. Pour the gravy over the rabbit and garnish with lemon slices before serving.

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: acetaldehyde (pungent, ethereal).

  4. Rabbit + lemontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together626 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

Rabbit
Is the main meat, becoming tender through slow simmering in liquid.
Bacon
Adds fat and savory flavor as it browns, and lards the lean rabbit meat.
Broth or stock
Cooks the rabbit gently and forms the base of the gravy.
Butter
Enriches the gravy and adds richness to its flavor and texture.
Flour
Thickens the strained liquid into a smooth gravy when cooked with butter.

The step that matters

Simmer gently until the rabbit is tender. Rabbit is very lean and dries out or toughens if boiled hard. A gentle simmer lets connective tissue break down slowly, keeping the meat moist and tender.

“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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