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Baked Rabbit

A stuffed rabbit baked with bread crumbs, heart, liver, pork, onion, spices, and stock.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 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 ↓

Baked 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 rabbit

  1. Remove the head, skin, and draw the rabbit.

  2. Soak the rabbit in cold salt water for 1 hour, changing the water if necessary.

  3. Wash the rabbit in fresh cold water and wipe it dry.

Stuff and dress

  1. Stuff the rabbit with a mixture of bread crumbs, parboiled heart and liver, chopped fat pork, minced onion, pepper, salt, mace, and moisten with the parboiling water.

  2. Sew up the opening tightly.

  3. Place the rabbit in a baking pan, back up.

  4. Rub the rabbit with butter or beef dripping and dredge with flour.

  5. Lay thin slices of fat pork on top.

  6. Pour 1 pint of boiling stock or beef dripping into the pan.

Bake and serve

  1. Bake at 350°F (175°C), basting every few minutes.

  2. When browned, turn the rabbit over, baste, dredge with flour, and continue baking until fully browned, about 1 hour.

  3. Serve hot with gravy.

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

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

  4. Pork + oniontop 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

Bread crumbs
Absorb the moistened juices and give the stuffing a soft, bound body.
Fat salt pork
Melts during baking, adding moisture and richness to the lean meat.
Flour
Dredged over the surface, it helps the rabbit brown and form a crisp coating.
Boiling stock
Creates a braising liquid in the pan that keeps the meat moist and forms gravy.

The step that matters

Basting and turning the rabbit. Rabbit is very lean, so it dries out easily. Frequent basting with the pan liquid keeps the meat moist, and turning it helps the whole surface brown evenly.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Garlicfits better
  3. Sagefits better
  4. Macethe original

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