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Roast Rabbits

Roast rabbits stuffed with bread crumbs, salt pork, onion, pepper, and salt, then roasted and served with currant jelly.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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 ↓

Roast Rabbits

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. Stuff the rabbits with a mixture of bread crumbs, chopped salt pork, onion, pepper, and salt.

  3. Sew up the rabbits and rub the outside with butter.

  4. Place the rabbits in a roasting pan with a little water.

Roast and serve

  1. Roast in the oven, turning and basting frequently.

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

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

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

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

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

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

  5. Bread + porktop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,371 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

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

What each ingredient does

Rabbits
Provide the lean meat that is the main component of the dish.
Salt pork
Adds fat and savory flavor that keeps the lean rabbit meat moist during roasting.
Bread crumbs
Absorb juices from the stuffing and help hold the filling together.
Butter
Adds fat to the skin, promoting gentle browning and richer flavor.
Currant jelly
Adds sweetness and acidity that balance the rich roasted meat.

The step that matters

Turning and basting frequently. Rabbit is very lean and dries out quickly in dry oven heat. Regular basting keeps the surface moist and turning promotes even cooking and browning on all sides.

Swap the currant

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

  1. Lemonfits better
  2. Mangofits better
  3. Coconutfits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against rabbit, bread, pork, onion, pepper, 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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