Skip to main content
Main

Roast Rabbit

A rabbit is stewed, its heart and liver are stewed into gravy, and the rabbit is stuffed with bread, egg yolk, and butter, then roasted.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

Roast Rabbit

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Cook the rabbit and gravy

  1. Stew the rabbit.

  2. Boil the haslet and liver.

  3. Stew the haslet and liver with parsley, thyme, celery seed, butter, salt, and pepper to make gravy.

Make the stuffing

  1. Soak a piece of loaf bread in water for a short time.

  2. Mix the soaked bread with the egg yolk and butter to make stuffing.

  3. Soak the stuffing in milk and cream.

Stuff and roast

  1. Sprinkle the inside of the rabbit with salt and pepper.

  2. Fill the rabbit with the stuffing.

  3. Sew the rabbit up.

  4. Roast or bake the rabbit quickly at 400°F (200°C).

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. Parsley + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,810 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  4. Thyme + celerytop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,193 recipes

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

  5. Thyme + peppertop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,585 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Haslet and liver
Cooked into the gravy, adding rich, savoury depth to the dish.
Bread
Absorbs liquid and gives the stuffing body and structure.
Egg yolk
Binds the soaked bread into a cohesive stuffing and adds richness.
Butter
Adds fat for richness, flavour and moisture in the gravy and stuffing.
Milk and cream
Moistens the stuffing, keeping it soft and tender during roasting.

The step that matters

Roast or bake the rabbit quickly at 400°F (200°C). Rabbit is very lean, so it dries out easily with long cooking. A hot oven cooks it through quickly, helping keep the meat moist while the stuffing heats.

Swap the celery

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (rabbit, liver, parsley, thyme, butter, pepper, bread):

  1. Marjoramfits better
  2. Sagefits better
  3. Winter savoryfits better
  4. Celerythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against rabbit, liver, parsley, thyme, butter, pepper, bread. 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.

More roasted rabbit recipes

with Bacon 3 See all 59 →

You might also like

Brown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesCream of Celery SoupCream of Celery Soup113 recipesWhite BreadWhite Bread80 recipesBread OmeletteBread Omelette60 recipes