Skip to main content
Main

Stewed Rabbit

A rabbit stew cooked with butter, water, onion, celery, salt, and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Pepper and celery match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 16,012 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Stewed Rabbit

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no cooking times; the times in the steps were added in transcription, so check for doneness rather than trusting the clock.

Prepare

  1. Skin and clean the rabbit, then cut it into pieces.

Brown and stew

  1. In a stew pan, melt the butter over medium heat.

  2. Add the rabbit pieces and brown them lightly.

  3. Pour in the boiling water and add the grated onion, salt, pepper, and celery.

  4. Cover and simmer until the rabbit is tender, about 1 hour.

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 + celerytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

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

  2. Onion + celerytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,518 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Rabbit + oniontop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,292 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 protein, becoming tender and flavorful through slow simmering.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, and helps the rabbit pieces brown lightly.
Flour
Dusts the rabbit so it browns and helps thicken the cooking liquid.
Celery
Contributes aromatic flavor to the simmering liquid.

The step that matters

Simmer covered until the rabbit is tender. Rabbit is lean and can turn dry or tough if cooked too hard or too fast. A gentle, covered simmer lets connective tissue break down slowly while the meat stays moist.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Mustardfits better
  2. Carrotfits better
  3. Turnipfits better
  4. Onionthe original

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

More stewed rabbit recipes

in Milk 8French 4 See all 67 →

You might also like

Cream of Celery SoupCream of Celery Soup113 recipesCelery StewCelery Stew25 recipesCelery CroquettesCelery Croquettes16 recipesCelery Cream SoupCelery Cream Soup15 recipes