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Stuffed Rabbit

A rabbit stuffed with a breadcrumb and herb mixture, boiled and served with parsley and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
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Why it works: Parsley and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Stuffed Rabbit

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the stuffing

  1. Mix together bread crumbs, parsley, powdered herbs, suet, lemon rind, egg, salt, and pepper.

  2. If the mixture is too dry, add a little milk.

Stuff and cook

  1. Stuff the well-cleaned rabbit with the mixture and sew it up.

  2. Boil gently for 45 minutes to 1 hour, depending on the rabbit's age.

Serve

  1. Serve with parsley and 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.

  1. Parsley + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  4. Bread + milktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  5. Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Bread crumbs
Absorb moisture and bind the stuffing so it holds together and stays tender.
Egg
Binds the stuffing ingredients together as it sets during cooking.
Suet
Adds fat that keeps the stuffing moist and rich as it cooks.

Swap the parsley

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (bread, lemon, egg, pepper, milk):

  1. Parsleythe original
  2. Marjoramfits about as well
  3. Nutmegfits less well
  4. Thymefits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, lemon, egg, pepper, milk. 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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