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Salad

Rabbit Salad

A salad of roasted rabbit slices with vinegar, oil, tarragon, onion, anchovies, capers, herbs, beetroot, egg, and mayonnaise.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 17 ingredients
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Why it works: Lettuce and capers match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 372 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Rabbit Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Marinate the rabbit slices in vinegar, salad oil, tarragon, onion, pepper, and salt for 1-2 hours, turning frequently.

  2. Shred the cabbage lettuce finely and spread it on the bottom of a dish.

Assemble and serve

  1. Arrange the marinated rabbit on the lettuce and intersperse with anchovy strips, capers, chervil, pimpernel, tarragon, beetroot, and small pieces of hard-boiled egg.

  2. Top with quartered lettuces and garnish with additional hard-boiled eggs and beetroot.

  3. Just before serving, pour over the mayonnaise sauce or serve oil, vinegar, and mustard separately.

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. Lettuce + caperstop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together372 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Tarragon + lettucetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together425 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Tarragon + caperstop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together379 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Cabbage + lettucetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together622 recipes

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

  5. Tarragon + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,399 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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 salad and absorbs flavour from the marinade.
Vinegar
Acidity in the marinade brightens the meat and balances the richness of the oil.
Salad oil
Carries the herb and onion flavours and keeps the meat moist during marinating.
Mayonnaise sauce
Adds richness and creamy moisture to the salad when poured over just before serving.
Hard-boiled egg
Adds soft, rich texture and a mild savoury contrast to the lettuce and meat.

The step that matters

Marinate the rabbit slices in vinegar, salad oil, tarragon, onion, pepper, and salt for 1-2 hours, turning frequently.. Turning the slices exposes every surface evenly to the acid and oil, so the flavour penetrates uniformly and the meat stays moist rather than patchy.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (rabbit, vinegar, tarragon, pepper, cabbage, lettuce, capers):

  1. Mustardfits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Beetrootfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against rabbit, vinegar, tarragon, pepper, cabbage, lettuce, capers. 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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