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Larded Rabbits

Rabbits larded with pork, browned and simmered in broth with herbs, onion, wine, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Rabbit and pork work together. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 832 recipes. Both carry decanal, which smells soap, orange peel. The science ↓

Larded Rabbits

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the rabbit

  1. Divide each rabbit into quarters.

  2. Lard the upper sides with strips of pork.

Brown and simmer

  1. Fry until lightly browned.

  2. Place in a saucepan and nearly cover with broth.

  3. Add onion, herbs, pepper, and salt.

  4. Simmer for 45 minutes or until tender.

  5. Keep the rabbits hot after cooking.

Make the gravy and serve

  1. Strain the gravy.

  2. Add a lump of butter rolled in flour and the wine.

  3. Boil the gravy.

  4. Pour it over the rabbits.

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

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

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

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

  4. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Rabbit + oniontop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,292 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Rabbits
Provide the main meat, which becomes tender through long, slow simmering.
Fat salt pork
Lardons add fat and moisture to the lean rabbit meat as it cooks.
Soup stock
Forms the cooking liquid that tenderizes the rabbit and becomes the gravy.
Butter
Enriches the gravy with fat and, with flour, thickens it smoothly.
Flour
Thickens the gravy when cooked with butter into a roux-like paste.
Wine
Adds acidity and depth of flavour to the finished gravy.

The step that matters

Simmer for 45 minutes or until tender. Rabbit is very lean, so it dries out or toughens if cooked too hard or too long. A gentle simmer in liquid breaks down connective tissue slowly and keeps the meat moist.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Capsicumfits about as well
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against rabbit, pork, wine, 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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