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Rabbits or Hares

A stuffed rabbit or hare roasted with a filling of heart, liver, pork, breadcrumbs, and seasoned with lemon, onion, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Rabbit and pork work together. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 832 recipes. Both carry decanal, which smells soap, orange peel. The science ↓

Rabbits or Hares

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the rabbit

  1. Soak the cleaned rabbit or hare in slightly salted water for 1.5 hours, changing the water once.

  2. Parboil the heart and liver, then chop them finely.

  3. Mix the chopped heart and liver with the minced pork.

  4. Make a stuffing with the bread crumbs, using the giblet boiling water to moisten it.

  5. Combine the stuffing with the minced meat.

  6. Stuff the rabbit or hare with the mixture.

  7. Sew the stuffed rabbit or hare closed.

  8. Rub the outside of the rabbit or hare with butter.

Roast and baste

  1. Roast the rabbit or hare at 400°F (200°C), basting with butter and water until the gravy flows freely.

  2. Dredge the rabbit or hare with flour a few minutes before removing it from the oven.

  3. Froth the rabbit or hare with butter.

Make the gravy and serve

  1. Add lemon juice, minced onion, and a tablespoon of butter to the gravy.

  2. Thicken the gravy with browned flour.

  3. Serve the rabbit or hare in a hot dish.

  4. Garnish with sliced lemon and a dot of currant jelly in the center of each slice.

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. Rabbit + porktop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together832 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

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

  3. Liver + porktop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,606 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-nonanal (fatty, waxy).

  4. Pork + oniontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,214 recipes

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

  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 or hare
Provides the main meat that is stuffed, roasted and served.
Bread crumbs
Absorb the giblet water to form a moist stuffing that keeps the meat tender.
Fat pork
Adds fat to the stuffing, keeping the lean filling moist and rich in flavor.
Heart and liver
Add savory, rich flavor to the stuffing.
Browned flour
Thickens the pan juices into a gravy and adds a toasted flavor.
Butter
Adds fat that promotes browning and a golden, glossy surface when basted.

The step that matters

Basting the rabbit while roasting. Lean rabbit dries out easily in the oven. Regular basting with butter and water adds moisture and fat to the surface, helping it stay juicy and brown evenly.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (rabbit, liver, pork, bread, butter, flour, onion):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against rabbit, liver, pork, bread, butter, flour, onion. 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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