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Roast Rabbit

A rabbit stuffed with liver, bread crumbs, thyme, onion, and spices, then roasted and basted.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 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

Prepare the stuffing

  1. Parboil the rabbit liver with the slice of ham or pork.

  2. Chop the liver finely and mix it with bread crumbs, thyme, onion, pepper, and salt.

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

  4. Rub the outside of the rabbit with sweet oil or butter.

Roast and serve

  1. Place a little butter in the pan with water for basting.

  2. Baste the rabbit frequently.

  3. Roast the rabbit for 1.5 hours.

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

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

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

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

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

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

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, cooking through during the long roast.
Bread crumbs
Absorb juices from the liver and onion, keeping the stuffing moist and binding it.
Liver
Adds richness and depth of flavour to the stuffing.
Sweet oil or butter
Fat that carries flavour and helps the outside of the rabbit brown in the oven.
Fat ham or sweet salt pork
Adds fat and savoury flavour to the liver stuffing as it cooks.

The step that matters

Baste the rabbit frequently. Rabbit is very lean, so it dries out easily during a long roast. Regular basting with fat and pan liquid keeps the meat moist and promotes even browning.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Mustardfits about as well
  2. Shallotfits about as well
  3. Onionthe original
  4. Leekfits about as well

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