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Rabbits Surprised

A stuffed rabbit dish with parsley, lemon peel, beef marrow, cream, egg yolks, and gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and lemon 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 ↓

Rabbits Surprised

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the rabbits

  1. Skewer and stuff the rabbits for roasting.

  2. Roast the rabbits until cooked through.

  3. Remove the meat from the bones, leaving the bones whole.

Make the filling

  1. Chop the meat finely and mix with parsley, lemon peel, beef marrow, cream, and salt.

  2. In a mortar, beat the hard-boiled egg yolks with butter until smooth.

  3. Combine the meat mixture with the egg yolk mixture and stew for 5 minutes.

Assemble and serve

  1. Spread the mixture evenly on the rabbits to make them appear whole.

  2. Use a salamander to brown the rabbits all over.

  3. Pour thick gravy into the dish and garnish with myrtle leaves.

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. Parsley + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

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

  2. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  3. Rabbit + beeftop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together252 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Rabbit + creamtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together409 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

  5. Lemon + myrtletop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together39 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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 is boned and then reshaped to look whole.
Hard-boiled egg yolks
Bind with butter to form a smooth, rich paste that holds the filling together.
Beef marrow
Adds richness and fat, keeping the chopped meat moist and flavourful.
Cream
Adds moisture and softness to the chopped meat mixture.
Butter
Adds fat and smoothness to the egg yolk paste.

The step that matters

Spreading the mixture evenly on the rabbits. An even layer of filling lets the rabbits look whole once browned. Uneven or thin spots show the bones and spoil the appearance. The filling should be smooth and spreadable so it stays in place.

Swap the parsley

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (rabbit, lemon, beef, cream, egg, butter, myrtle):

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Rosemaryfits about as well
  3. Thymefits about as well
  4. Parsleythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against rabbit, lemon, beef, cream, egg, butter, myrtle. 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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