Name: Rabbit for Roasting
Ingredients: 1 rabbit; salt; pepper; butter

Why it works: Rabbit and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,448 recipes. Both carry decanal, which smells soap, orange peel. The science ↓

Rabbit for Roasting

Ingredients

1 rabbit
salt
pepper
butter

Directions

Prepare the rabbit by cutting off the ears close to the head.
Make a slit about an inch on each side of the rump.
Turn the hind legs under and bring the ends to the front legs.
Skewer the hind legs to the body.
Season with salt and pepper, and rub with butter.

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.

Rabbit + buttertop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,448 recipes

Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).
Rabbit + peppertop 18% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,334 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-pentylpyridine (fat).
Pepper + buttertop 21% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together85,593 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).