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A Dish Rabbit

A rabbit marinated in vinegar, onion, and bay leaf, then fried and stewed with lemon juice and currant jelly.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 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 ↓

A Dish Rabbit

Ingredients

Directions

Marinate

  1. Rub the rabbit meat with moist sugar and let it stand for several hours.

  2. Place the rabbit in a dish with vinegar, minced onion, and bay leaf.

  3. Let it marinate for 48 hours, turning and basting several times.

  4. Drain the rabbit and lard it.

Cook and make the sauce

  1. Brown it quickly in a frying pan with butter.

  2. Season the butter with salt and pepper, adding the marinade.

  3. Cover and steam until very tender, basting several times.

  4. Transfer to a hot dish.

  5. Add lemon juice and currant jelly.

  6. Thicken the sauce.

  7. Strain.

  8. Serve in a sauce tureen.

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. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  3. Vinegar + curranttop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together693 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

  4. Rabbit + oniontop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,292 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Vinegar + oniontop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,226 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

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

What each ingredient does

Rabbit
Main protein that becomes tender through long marinating and gentle steaming.
Moist sugar
Adds sweetness and helps draw moisture and flavor into the meat surface.
Vinegar
Acidity in the marinade tenderizes the meat and balances the rich sauce.
Butter
Fat for frying that browns the rabbit and carries flavor into the sauce.
Currant jelly
Adds sweetness, fruity flavor and body to the sauce as it melts and thickens.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the sauce and balances the sweetness of the jelly.

The step that matters

Cover and steam until very tender, basting several times. Rabbit is lean and can turn dry or tough if cooked too fast or too hot. Gentle, covered steaming with basting keeps moisture in the meat while collagen softens, so the cook should go by tenderness rather than the clock.

Swap the currant

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

  1. Limefits better
  2. Mangofits better
  3. Cherryfits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against rabbit, sugar, vinegar, onion, pepper, butter, lemon. 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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