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Rabbit, Spiced

A rabbit prepared with bacon, salt, flour, butter, lard, and hot water, then browned and simmered.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Rabbit, Spiced

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the rabbit

  1. Wash the rabbit in cold water and remove the eyes.

  2. Lard the rabbit by making incisions in the thick parts and pressing in the bacon.

  3. Place the rabbit in a pickle for three days.

  4. After three days, dry the rabbit, sprinkle with salt, and dredge with flour.

Brown and serve

  1. Heat the butter and lard in a frying pan until hot.

  2. Brown the rabbit on both sides, covering the pan and basting occasionally for 30 minutes.

  3. Add hot water to the pan, boil for a few minutes, stir, and pour into a gravy dish.

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. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Rabbit + flourtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetaldehyde (pungent, ethereal).

  3. Rabbit + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,448 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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 dish, becoming tender as it cooks slowly under cover.
Bacon
Adds fat that keeps the lean rabbit meat moist and adds savoury flavour.
Flour
Dredged on the rabbit, it helps form a browned crust and thickens the pan juices.
Butter
Fat that browns the rabbit and adds rich, nutty flavour to the surface.
Lard
Fat with a high cooking temperature that browns the rabbit evenly without burning quickly.
Hot water
Loosens the browned bits from the pan so they dissolve into the gravy.

The step that matters

Browning the rabbit in hot fat. The butter and lard must be fully hot before the rabbit goes in, so the floured surface sears and browns instead of steaming. Covering the pan then gently finishes the meat while basting keeps it moist.

“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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