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Roast Rabbits

Roast rabbits stuffed with breadcrumbs, salt pork, onion, thyme, pepper, and salt, then roasted with butter and gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Thyme and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,585 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Roast Rabbits

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Skin and clean the rabbits thoroughly, then wash them.

  2. Stuff the rabbits with a mixture of breadcrumbs, chopped fat salt pork, onion, thyme, pepper, and salt.

  3. Sew the openings with fine thread and bind the legs to the body.

Roast

  1. Place the rabbits in a dripping pan and pour boiling water over them.

  2. Cover the pan and roast, basting twice with butter and twice with the gravy.

  3. Just before finishing, dredge with flour and baste one last time with butter.

Serve

  1. Remove the threads, dish the rabbits, and thicken the gravy 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.

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

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

  2. Rabbit + porktop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together832 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Onion + thymetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,171 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Pork + oniontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,214 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Rabbits or hares
Provide the meat that is roasted and served as the main dish.
Breadcrumbs
Soak up juices from the stuffing, keeping the filling moist and lightly textured.
Fat salt pork
Adds fat that bastes the meat from inside, adding moisture and savoury flavour.
Butter
Basting fat that promotes browning and a rich, golden surface on the roasted meat.
Flour
Dredged over the meat near the end to help form a browned, crisp crust.

The step that matters

Covering and basting the roast. Covering the pan traps steam and keeps the lean meat moist, while regular basting with butter and gravy keeps the surface from drying out and encourages even browning.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (rabbit, pork, thyme, pepper, butter, flour):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Potatofits better
  3. Mustardfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against rabbit, pork, thyme, pepper, butter, flour. 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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