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Barbecued Rabbit

Barbecued rabbit seasoned with butter, pepper, salt, and a vinegar-mustard-jelly-lemon sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 ↓

Barbecued Rabbit

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a hot oven”. The 400°F in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Grill

  1. Grease the rabbit well with butter, then rub it with pepper and coarse sea salt.

  2. Place the rabbit on a grill and turn it often until well done.

Finish and serve

  1. Remove the rabbit to a pan with plenty of butter and set it in a hot oven (400°F / 200°C) for a few minutes.

  2. In a bowl, mix vinegar, mustard, jelly, and lemon juice together.

  3. Pour the sauce over the rabbit and serve.

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. Vinegar + mustardtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Pepper + mustardtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,430 recipes

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

  4. Rabbit + mustardtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together56 recipes

    Shared aroma: geraniol (rose, geranium).

  5. Mustard + lemontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,816 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

What each ingredient does

Rabbit
Provides the meat that is grilled, basted and finished in the oven.
Butter
Adds richness and moisture, and helps the rabbit brown in the pan.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens the sauce and balances the sweetness of the jelly.
Jelly
Adds sweetness and body to the sauce.
Mustard
Adds sharp flavour and helps emulsify the sauce.

The step that matters

Turning the rabbit on the grill. Rabbit is very lean, so turning it often over moderate heat helps it cook evenly and reach well done without drying out or burning on the outside. Butter and the sauce help keep it moist.

“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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