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Fried Rabbit

Fried rabbit with a butter‑lard sauce, served hot.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 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 ↓

Fried Rabbit

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the rabbit

  1. Boil the cleaned rabbit in water for 10 minutes.

  2. Drain and let it cool, then cut into joints.

Coat and fry

  1. Dip each joint in beaten egg, then coat with bread crumbs, seasoning with salt and pepper.

  2. Fry the joints in a mixture of butter and lard over moderate heat until browned on both sides.

  3. Remove the rabbit and thicken the remaining fat with flour.

Make the sauce and serve

  1. Stir in the milk or cream and bring to a boil.

  2. Pour the sauce over the rabbit and serve hot with onion sauce.

  3. Garnish with sliced lemon.

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. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  4. Bread + milktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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
Provides the main meat, which turns tender after boiling and then browns when fried.
Eggs
Bind the bread crumbs to the rabbit so the coating adheres during frying.
Bread crumbs
Form a crisp, browned coating on the outside of the joints.
Butter and lard
Conduct heat for frying and add richness and browning to the coating.
Flour
Thickens the leftover fat into the base of the sauce.
Milk or cream
Adds moisture and richness to the sauce, which thickens as it boils.

The step that matters

Fry over moderate heat until browned on both sides. Moderate heat lets the coating brown and crisp while the inside finishes cooking. Too high a heat scorches the breadcrumbs before the joints are cooked through.

“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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