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Roast Rabbit

A rabbit stuffed with liver, ham, salt pork, breadcrumbs, thyme, onion, and spices, then roasted and served with mashed potatoes and red currant jelly.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 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 Rabbit

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 the stuffing

  1. Parboil the rabbit liver with the slice of ham and chopped salt pork.

  2. Chop the liver and ham mixture, then combine with bread crumbs, thyme, onion, pepper, and salt.

  3. Fill the rabbit's body with the mixture and sew it up.

Roast and serve

  1. Rub the outside with sweet oil or butter.

  2. Place a little water in the roasting pan.

  3. Roast in a 350°F (175°C) oven for 1.5 hours, basting frequently.

  4. Serve with mashed potatoes and red 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. 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. Thyme + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,171 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Ham + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,536 recipes

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

  5. Liver + porktop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,606 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-nonanal (fatty, waxy).

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

What each ingredient does

Rabbit
Forms the main body of the dish, cooked whole and stuffed.
Bread crumbs
Absorb juices from the liver, ham and salt pork, keeping the stuffing moist and binding it together.
Salt pork
Renders fat during cooking, adding moisture and savory flavor to the stuffing and rabbit.
Liver
Adds rich, savory depth to the stuffing and firms slightly when parboiled and chopped.
Sweet oil or butter
Coats the outside to promote even browning and keep the surface from drying out.

The step that matters

Sew up the stuffed rabbit and baste frequently. Overfilling or loose sewing can let stuffing expand and burst, and lean game meat dries out easily. Frequent basting with pan juices keeps the surface moist and promotes even browning during the long roast.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (rabbit, liver, ham, pork, bread, thyme, pepper):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against rabbit, liver, ham, pork, bread, thyme, pepper. 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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