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Rabbit, Minced

A minced rabbit dish cooked with butter, eggs, lemon, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Rabbit, Minced

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the rabbit

  1. Skin, empty, and wash the rabbit, then boil it until tender, about 45 minutes to 1 hour.

  2. Remove the flesh from the bones and mince it.

  3. Season the minced rabbit with pepper, salt, nutmeg, lemon peel, and lemon juice.

Make the mixture

  1. In a saucepan, combine the minced rabbit with butter and beaten eggs.

  2. Stir the mixture continuously for 15 minutes.

Serve

  1. Transfer to a hot dish, squeeze lemon juice over it, garnish with toasted sippets, and serve hot.

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 + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  2. Nutmeg + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

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

  3. Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Rabbit + nutmegtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together235 recipes

    Shared aroma: sabinene (woody, terpenic).

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 is cooked until tender and then minced into the dish.
Eggs
Bind the minced meat and set with stirring, giving the mixture a thick, creamy body.
Butter
Adds richness and moisture, keeping the minced meat soft and smooth as it cooks.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich butter and egg mixture.

The step that matters

Stir the mixture continuously for 15 minutes. Eggs set when heated, and if they sit still over heat they can curdle or scramble unevenly. Constant stirring keeps the heat even so the mixture thickens smoothly.

Swap the nutmeg

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

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Tarragonfits better
  3. Thymefits about as well
  4. Nutmegthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against rabbit, pepper, lemon, butter, egg. 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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