Name: Fried Rabbit
Ingredients: very young rabbits; coarse sea salt; black pepper; ground ginger; cracker crumbs; 1 beaten egg; butter or fat for frying; slices of lemon for garnish; sprigs of parsley for garnish

Why it works: Lemon and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Fried Rabbit

Ingredients

Directions

Clean the rabbits and cut them into joints.
Soak the joints in salted water for at least 1 hour.
Wipe the joints dry and sprinkle with salt, pepper, and ginger.
Roll each joint in cracker crumbs, then in beaten egg.
Fry in hot butter or fat until brown and cooked through.
Garnish with lemon slices and parsley before serving.

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.

Lemon + parsleytop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together14,037 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).
Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together34,122 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together27,047 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
Ginger + lemontop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together5,154 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).
Pepper + gingertop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together6,800 recipes

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

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

Swap the ginger

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (rabbit, pepper, egg, butter, lemon, parsley):

Tarragonfits better
Thymefits better
Marjoramfits better
Gingerthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against rabbit, pepper, egg, butter, lemon, parsley. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.