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Rabbit Cutlets

Rabbit cutlets made from minced rabbit, bread crumbs, onion, bacon or ham, seasoned, fried, served with parsley and brown 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 Cutlets

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the filling

  1. Boil the rabbit for 30 minutes.

  2. Remove all the meat from the bones and mince it very finely.

  3. Mix the minced rabbit with bread crumbs, chopped onion, minced bacon or ham, pepper, and salt.

Shape and fry

  1. Shape the mixture into cutlets.

  2. Coat each cutlet in egg and then in bread crumbs.

  3. Fry the cutlets in hot fat until brown.

Serve

  1. Serve on a bed of parsley with brown gravy in a tureen.

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. Bread + hamtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,536 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

  3. Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  4. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  5. Rabbit + oniontop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,292 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Rabbit
Forms the main body of the cutlets, providing the meaty texture once minced and bound.
Bread crumbs
Absorb moisture and help bind the minced meat so the cutlets hold their shape.
Egg
Binds the crumb coating to the cutlet and helps it set and brown during frying.
Bacon or ham
Adds fat and savory flavor to the lean minced rabbit.
Onion
Adds aromatic flavor and moisture to the cutlet mixture.

The step that matters

Frying the cutlets in hot fat until brown. If the fat is not hot enough, the crumb coating absorbs oil and turns greasy instead of crisping. Hot fat sears the outside quickly, forming a golden crust that holds the cutlet together.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (rabbit, bread, ham, pepper, egg, parsley):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Asparagusfits better
  3. Carrotfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against rabbit, bread, ham, pepper, egg, parsley. 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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