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Roast Rabbit

A rabbit stuffed with sausage and breadcrumbs, roasted with onions, carrots, and aromatics, served with lemon slices and cranberry jelly.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,873 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Roast Rabbit

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Soak the cleaned rabbit in salted water for at least 1 hour.

  2. Mix bread crumbs, sausage meat, salt, pepper, and beaten egg to make the stuffing.

  3. Stuff the rabbit with the mixture and sew it up.

Roast

  1. Line a roasting pan with chopped onion, carrot, cloves, peppercorns, and bay leaf.

  2. Rub the rabbit with salt and pepper, place it in the pan, and dot with butter.

  3. Dust the top with flour and add hot water to the bottom of the pan.

  4. Cover the pan tightly and roast, basting frequently.

Serve

  1. When done, serve on a hot platter garnished with lemon slices and cranberry jelly.

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. Carrot + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,873 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Onion + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

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

  3. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  4. Rabbit + meattop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together315 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  5. Onion + clovetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,901 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

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 and juicy as it roasts covered with moisture.
Bread crumbs
Absorb juices and egg in the stuffing, giving it a moist, cohesive texture.
Egg
Binds the stuffing so it holds together when sliced and served.
Sausage meat
Adds fat and savoury flavour to the stuffing, keeping it moist during roasting.
Butter
Adds fat that promotes browning and richness on the rabbit's surface.

The step that matters

Cover the pan tightly and roast, basting frequently.. Covering traps steam so the lean rabbit cooks through gently without drying out, while basting redistributes juices over the surface to keep the meat moist.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (rabbit, bread, meat, egg, onion, carrot, butter):

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Garlicfits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against rabbit, bread, meat, egg, onion, carrot, butter. 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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