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Cheese-and-tomato Rabbit

A rabbit dish made with butter, tomato puree, cheese, salt, egg yolks, baking soda, and paprika, served hot on toast.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and cheese are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,962 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Cheese-and-tomato Rabbit

Ingredients

Directions

Make the rabbit

  1. Melt the butter in a saucepan.

  2. Stir in the tomato puree and cheese until melted.

  3. Add the salt, egg yolks, baking soda, and paprika, and mix well.

Serve

  1. Serve hot on toast.

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. Butter + cheesetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,962 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Tomato + cheesetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,896 recipes

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

  3. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Butter + tomatotop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,918 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  5. Cheese + eggtop 28% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,253 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Cheese
Melts into the sauce to give it body and a rich, savoury flavour.
Eggs
Egg yolks thicken the sauce and help it set smoothly as it cools.
Tomato puree
Adds moisture, acidity and colour to the sauce.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, helping the cheese melt smoothly.
Baking soda
Neutralises some acidity from the tomato and cheese, softening the sauce.

The step that matters

Stir in the egg yolks gently over low heat. Egg yolks thicken when heated, but if the sauce gets too hot they can scramble and turn grainy. Keeping the heat gentle and stirring steadily keeps the sauce smooth and creamy.

Swap the tomato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, cheese, egg):

  1. Asparagusfits better
  2. Potatofits better
  3. Chivefits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, cheese, egg. 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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