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Fried Rabbit

A rabbit cooked in boiling water, breaded, fried, and served with a butter‑cream gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Fried Rabbit

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the rabbit

  1. Put the cleaned rabbit into boiling water for about ten minutes.

  2. Drain the rabbit and let it cool, then cut it into joints.

Coat and fry

  1. Dip each joint into the beaten egg, then coat with seasoned bread crumbs.

  2. Fry the coated rabbit joints in butter over moderate heat for fifteen minutes.

Make the gravy and serve

  1. For the gravy, melt 1 ounce of butter, add flour, and cook for one minute.

  2. Stir in cream and bring to a boil.

  3. Dish the fried rabbit and pour the gravy over it. Serve immediately.

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

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

  2. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  3. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: acetaldehyde (pungent, ethereal).

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
Is the main protein, cooked first in water and then fried to become tender and browned.
Eggs
Act as a binder that helps the bread crumbs adhere to the rabbit joints.
Bread crumbs
Form a crisp, golden coating that browns during frying.
Butter
Conducts heat for frying and adds richness and browning to the joints and gravy.
Flour
Thickens the butter and cream into a smooth gravy.
Cream
Adds richness and body to the gravy.

The step that matters

Cooking the flour in the butter before adding cream. Cooking flour briefly in melted butter removes its raw taste and lets it thicken the liquid evenly. Adding cream without this step can leave the gravy floury or lumpy.

“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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