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A Delicious Rabbit Fry

A dish of rabbit pieces fried in butter and lard after being coated in flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 ↓

A Delicious Rabbit Fry

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the rabbit into pieces and wash quickly in cold water. Do not soak.

  2. Season the rabbit pieces with salt and pepper, then roll them in flour.

Fry

  1. Heat a frying pan until very hot.

  2. Add butter and lard to the pan, then place the rabbit in it.

  3. Cover the pan and cook until the rabbit is well done before turning it to brown the other side.

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

Rabbit
Is the main protein; cooking until well done makes the meat tender and safe to eat.
Flour
Coats the pieces so they form a crust that browns when fried.
Butter
Adds richness and flavour and helps the surface brown in the hot pan.
Lard
Adds a high-temperature frying fat that promotes even browning.

The step that matters

Cover the pan and cook until well done before turning. Covering traps steam so the thick pieces cook through, and turning too early leaves the interior undercooked and the coating unevenly browned.

“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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