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Baked Rabbit

A whole rabbit stuffed, baked, and served with gravy.

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 ↓

Baked Rabbit

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Remove the head, skin, and draw the rabbit.

  2. Soak it in cold salt water for one hour, changing the water if necessary.

  3. Wash in fresh cold water and wipe dry.

Stuff and dress

  1. Stuff the rabbit with a mixture of bread crumbs, parboiled heart and liver, chopped fat pork, minced onion, pepper, salt, mace, and a little of the parboiling water.

  2. Sew up the opening.

  3. Place the rabbit in a baking pan, back side up.

  4. Rub with butter or beef dripping, dredge with flour, and lay thin slices of fat pork on top.

  5. Pour boiling stock or beef dripping into the pan.

Bake and serve

  1. Bake at 350°F (175°C), basting every few minutes.

  2. When browned, turn the rabbit over, baste, dredge with flour, and continue baking until browned, about one hour.

  3. Serve in a hot dish with gravy prepared as directed in the recipe for Gravy for Baked Meats.

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Young rabbit
Forms the main body of the dish, cooking to tender meat under dry heat and basting.
Bread crumbs
Absorb the juices and parboiling liquid, keeping the stuffing moist and tender.
Fat salt pork
Melts during baking, adding moisture and richness to the lean rabbit meat.
Flour
Dredged over the surface, it helps the rabbit brown and form a crisp coating.
Butter or beef dripping
Rubbed on the skin, it conducts heat and promotes browning and flavour.
Boiling stock
Poured into the pan to keep the meat moist and build the base for the gravy.

The step that matters

Basting and turning during the bake. Lean rabbit dries out quickly in dry oven heat. Regular basting keeps the surface moist and lets the flour and fat brown evenly, while turning the rabbit allows both sides to cook through and colour.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Garlicfits better
  3. Sagefits better
  4. Macethe original

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