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Rabbit, Spiced

A whole rabbit larded with bacon, pickled, then browned and simmered in a gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Rabbit, Spiced

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Skin and dress the rabbit, leaving it whole with the head on.

  2. Wash the rabbit in cold water and remove its eyes.

  3. Make incisions in the rabbit and press bacon pieces into the cuts to lard it.

  4. Place the larded rabbit in a pickle for three days.

  5. After three days, dry the rabbit.

  6. Sprinkle the rabbit with coarse sea salt.

  7. Dredge the rabbit in flour.

Cook and serve

  1. Heat a frying pan with butter and lard until hot.

  2. Brown the rabbit on both sides.

  3. Baste the rabbit occasionally.

  4. Cook the rabbit slowly for 30 minutes.

  5. Add hot water to the pan and let the water boil for a few minutes, then stir the mixture.

  6. Pour the contents into a gravy dish.

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. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Rabbit + flourtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetaldehyde (pungent, ethereal).

  3. Rabbit + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,448 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

Flour and butter 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

Bacon fat
Adds fat and richness that keeps the lean rabbit meat moist as it cooks.
Flour
Coats the rabbit so the surface browns and forms a light crust.
Butter
Adds fat and flavour for browning the rabbit in the pan.
Lard
Adds fat that tolerates heat, helping the rabbit brown evenly without burning.

The step that matters

Brown the rabbit on both sides. Browning relies on dry heat and the Maillard reaction. The rabbit was dried and dredged in flour beforehand, and the pan must be hot, or the meat steams instead of forming a golden crust with deep flavour.

“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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