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Rabbit, with Cucumber

A sliced rabbit served with cucumber in a buttery sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and thyme match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,057 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Rabbit, with Cucumber

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the meat from the cold roast rabbit into neat strips and set aside.

  2. Slice the cucumber very thinly and sprinkle with a little coarse sea salt.

  3. Place the cucumber between two dishes for an hour.

  4. Drain the water from the cucumber and pour 1-2 tablespoons of vinegar over it; let it sit for another hour.

Make the sauce

  1. Pour off the vinegar and place the cucumber in a saucepan with the butter, parsley, thyme, bay leaf, and onion or chives.

  2. Shake the saucepan over the heat until the cucumber is slightly browned.

  3. Dredge a little flour over the cucumber, then pour in the gravy or stock and let it simmer gently for 30 minutes.

  4. Remove the herbs, season the sauce with pepper and salt, and add the rabbit pieces to heat through without boiling.

Serve

  1. Serve the rabbit piled on a dish with the sauce poured over it, very 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. Parsley + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Thyme + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,171 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Cucumber + parsleytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,564 recipes

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

  4. Cucumber + oniontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,050 recipes

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

  5. Cucumber + vinegartop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,734 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyl acetate (fruit).

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

What each ingredient does

Cucumber
Salting and vinegar soften it, and browning it in butter adds a savoury flavour to the sauce.
Butter
Fat that browns the cucumber and carries the herb aroma into the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the gravy or stock into a smooth sauce as it simmers.
Gravy or stock
Liquid base that becomes the body and savour of the sauce.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens the flavour of the cucumber and sauce.

The step that matters

Heating the rabbit without boiling. Once the rabbit goes in, boiling the sauce can toughen the meat and make the sauce grainy or tight. Keeping it at a gentle heat only warms the meat through.

Swap the cucumber

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (rabbit, vinegar, butter, parsley, thyme, onion, flour):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Chivefits better
  3. Leekfits better
  4. Cucumberthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against rabbit, vinegar, butter, parsley, thyme, onion, flour. 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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