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Rabbit, Larded

A rabbit larded with bacon, fried and served with a creamy stock gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and parsley 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 ↓

Rabbit, Larded

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the rabbit

  1. Skin, empty, and wash the rabbit.

  2. Cut off its head.

  3. Divide the body into four equal parts.

  4. Lard the fleshy part of each portion with strips of bacon.

  5. Fry the quarters in hot fat until lightly browned, then set aside.

Make the gravy

  1. In a saucepan, combine the stock and brown thickening, and simmer gently until smooth and creamy.

  2. Stir in the sherry or Madeira, add the rabbit, and heat thoroughly without boiling.

Serve

  1. Serve the meat on a hot dish, pour the gravy over it, and garnish with cut lemon and parsley.

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. Lemon + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

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

  2. Rabbit + lemontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together626 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Rabbit + parsleytop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together602 recipes

    Shared aroma: sabinene (woody, terpenic).

  4. Sherry + lemontop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,273 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  5. Sherry + parsleytop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,310 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

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

What each ingredient does

Rabbit
Provides the main meat, which becomes tender through gentle heating in the gravy.
Bacon fat strips
Larding adds fat and moisture to the lean meat as it cooks.
Brown thickening
Thickens the stock into a smooth, creamy gravy.
Sherry or madeira
Adds acidity and aromatic depth to the gravy.

The step that matters

Heat the rabbit without boiling. Boiling the gravy after the rabbit is added can toughen the meat and make the sauce break or turn grainy, so it should be heated gently and thoroughly.

Swap the parsley

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (rabbit, sherry, lemon):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Tarragonfits about as well
  3. Marjoramfits about as well
  4. Parsleythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against rabbit, sherry, lemon. 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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