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Rabbit, Roast, Plain

A roasted rabbit served with a bacon, ham, and sherry sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 18 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and celery match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,173 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Rabbit, Roast, Plain

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the rabbit

  1. Skin, empty, and wash the rabbit.

  2. Truss the rabbit firmly with fore-legs backwards and back-legs forwards, securing the head upright with string.

  3. Tie 1-2 rashers of bacon over the back.

Roast

  1. Roast the rabbit over a clear fire, basting well until cooked (about 45 minutes to 1 hour).

  2. Place the rabbit on a hot dish, remove skewers, and garnish with fried bacon.

Make the sauce

  1. In a stewpan, combine diced ham or bacon, butter, carrot, onion, celery, thyme, bay leaf, peppercorns, and mace, then stir over gentle heat until browned.

  2. Add ketchup, vinegar, and essence of anchovy, then simmer for 10 minutes.

  3. Pour in stock and sherry, simmer until the sauce is flavored.

  4. Thicken with brown thickening or flour mixture and sugar browning, then boil for a few minutes.

  5. Serve the sauce hot with the rabbit.

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. Carrot + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Carrot + thymetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  3. Celery + thymetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,193 recipes

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

  4. Carrot + oniontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

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

  5. Onion + thymetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,171 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Rabbit
Provides the lean meat that is roasted and served as the main dish.
Bacon
Tied over the back and fried for garnish, adding fat and savoury flavour to the meat.
Ham or bacon
Browned with the vegetables to build a savoury base for the sauce.
Brown thickening or flour
Thickens the sauce so it clings to the rabbit instead of running thin.
Sherry
Adds acidity and depth of flavour to the sauce as it simmers.
Sugar browning
Darkens the sauce and adds a slight sweetness and caramel colour.

The step that matters

Browning the diced ham or bacon with the vegetables. Slow browning over gentle heat caramelises the meat and vegetable sugars, building the colour and roasted flavour the sauce depends on. Rushing it over high heat can scorch the sugars and make the sauce bitter.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (rabbit, ham, butter, carrot, onion, celery, thyme):

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Marjoramfits better
  3. Tarragonfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against rabbit, ham, butter, carrot, onion, celery, thyme. 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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