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Rabbit, Cold, to Dress

A cold rabbit prepared by coating in egg and breadcrumb batter, fried, and served with a ketchup gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Rabbit, Cold, to Dress

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Joint the rabbit meat.

  2. In a bowl, beat the eggs with nutmeg, pepper, salt, parsley, and bread crumbs.

  3. Dip the meat into the batter, then sprinkle with additional bread crumbs.

Fry and serve

  1. Heat sweet beef dripping in a pan and fry the meat until light brown.

  2. Thicken a little gravy with flour and add ketchup.

  3. Place the fried meat on a hot dish and pour the gravy around it, not over it.

  4. Garnish with lemon and serve with toast.

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 + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  2. Nutmeg + parsleytop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,062 recipes

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

  3. Nutmeg + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

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

  4. Nutmeg + flourtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Pepper + beeftop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,971 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Bind the batter so the bread crumb coating adheres to the meat.
Bread crumbs
Form a crisp, browned coating that protects the meat while it fries.
Flour
Thickens the gravy so it coats the plate rather than running off.
Sweet beef dripping
Fat for frying that browns the coated meat and adds rich flavour.
Ketchup
Adds sweetness and acidity to the gravy.

The step that matters

Fry until light brown. Frying over steady heat sets and browns the egg and crumb coating. Too little heat leaves it greasy and soft, while too much browns the outside before the meat cooks through.

Swap the parsley

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, nutmeg, pepper, bread, beef, flour, ketchup):

  1. Marjoramfits about as well
  2. Parsleythe original
  3. Allspicefits about as well
  4. Cinnamonfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, nutmeg, pepper, bread, beef, flour, ketchup. 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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