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Stewed Rabbit

A rabbit stew with onions, cloves, lemon peel, forcemeat balls, liver, butter, flour, and mushroom catsup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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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 Rabbit

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Combine the rabbit joints, sliced onions, cloves, and chopped lemon peel in a stewpan.

  2. Add enough water to cover the meat and bring to a boil.

Cook and finish

  1. Once the rabbit is nearly cooked, add the forcemeat balls and the finely chopped liver.

  2. Thicken the gravy with the butter and flour mixture.

  3. Stir in the mushroom catsup and bring to a boil.

  4. Serve.

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. Clove + lemontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,150 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Onion + mushroomtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,626 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  4. Clove + mushroomtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,663 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  5. Rabbit + meattop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together315 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Rabbit
Provides the meat that becomes tender as it simmers slowly in liquid.
Onions
Add sweetness and body to the stew as they soften and release their flavour.
Butter and flour
Together form a roux that thickens the gravy into a smooth, cohesive sauce.
Mushroom catsup
Adds a concentrated savoury, umami depth to the gravy.

The step that matters

Thicken the gravy with the butter and flour mixture. Flour needs to be cooked in fat and then simmered in liquid to lose its raw taste and thicken evenly; adding it without blending may cause lumps.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (rabbit, onion, clove, butter, flour, mushroom, meat):

  1. Coconutfits better
  2. Avocadofits better
  3. Lemonthe original
  4. Mangofits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against rabbit, onion, clove, butter, flour, mushroom, meat. 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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