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Fried Rabbits or Squirrels

Fried rabbit or squirrel coated in seasoned flour, served with cream gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Rabbit and cream work together. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 409 recipes. Both carry 2-nonanone, which smells fruity, floral. The science ↓

Fried Rabbits or Squirrels

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Clean and prepare the rabbits or squirrels as you would for fried chicken.

  2. Season flour with salt and pepper.

  3. Dredge the meat in the seasoned flour.

Fry

  1. Heat oil or lard in a skillet over medium‑high heat.

  2. Fry the meat until golden brown and cooked through.

Make the gravy and serve

  1. In a separate pan, make a cream gravy by combining cream and milk, thickening with flour if desired.

  2. Serve the fried meat with the cream gravy.

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 + creamtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together409 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

  2. Rabbit + flourtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetaldehyde (pungent, ethereal).

  3. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Cream + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together29,399 recipes

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

  5. Rabbit + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together284 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

Flour and milk barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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

Rabbits or squirrels
Provides the meat that is coated, fried and cooked through.
Flour
Forms a seasoned coating that browns in the hot fat and gives a crisp crust.
Cream
Adds richness and body to the gravy.
Milk
Thins the cream into a pourable gravy base.

The step that matters

Fry the meat until golden brown and cooked through. Medium-high heat browns the flour coating through Maillard browning while the meat cooks inside. Too low a heat soaks the coating with oil and leaves it pale and greasy; too high a heat browns the outside before the centre is cooked.

“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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