Skip to main content
Main

Roast Rabbit

A rabbit stuffed with bread crumbs, onion, sage, pepper, salt, butter, and wrapped in salt pork, roasted and served with currant jelly.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Sage and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,388 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Roast Rabbit

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a quick oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).

Stuff and roast

  1. Fill the dressed rabbit with a mixture of bread crumbs, onion, sage, pepper, salt, and butter.

  2. Tie a piece of salt pork over the rabbit.

  3. Place the rabbit in a dripping pan with water.

  4. Baste often while roasting.

Serve

  1. 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. Sage + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,388 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. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  4. Onion + porktop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,214 recipes

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

  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
Is the main protein, cooked by dry roasting in the oven.
Bread crumbs
Absorb juices from the filling, adding soft body and moisture inside the rabbit.
Salt pork
Lean meat wrapped over the rabbit, adding fat that bastes the surface and flavor.
Butter
Adds fat and richness to the bread crumb filling.

The step that matters

Baste often while roasting. Lean rabbit meat dries out easily in dry oven heat. Regular basting with the pan juices and fat keeps the surface moist and helps it brown evenly.

Swap the currant

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

  1. Lemonfits better
  2. Limefits better
  3. Applefits better
  4. Currantthe original

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

You might also like

Brown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesPork CakePork Cake107 recipesRoast PorkRoast Pork82 recipesWhite BreadWhite Bread80 recipes