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To Fry Rabbits

A dish of rabbit pieces fried in butter and finished with a cream or egg yolk gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

To Fry Rabbits

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wash the rabbits well and soak them in cold water for 2 to 3 hours.

  2. Cut the rabbits into joints and dry them with a cloth.

  3. Dredge the joints with flour and sprinkle with chopped parsley.

Fry and finish

  1. Fry the joints in butter until golden brown.

  2. Remove the rabbits from the frying pan.

  3. Stir the cream or beaten egg yolk into the gravy. Do not let the gravy boil.

  4. Pour it over the rabbits immediately before serving.

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. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  2. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + parsleytop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,675 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  5. Rabbit + flourtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetaldehyde (pungent, ethereal).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Rabbits
Provide the meat that is cooked and served as the main dish.
Flour
Forms a dry coating that helps the joints brown during frying.
Butter
Conducts heat for frying and adds richness and browning to the joints.
Cream or egg yolk
Thickens and enriches the gravy, giving it a smooth, rich texture.

The step that matters

Do not let the gravy boil. Once cream or egg yolk is stirred in, boiling can curdle the mixture, causing it to separate and turn grainy. Keeping it warm but below a boil keeps it smooth.

Swap the parsley

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (rabbit, flour, butter, cream):

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Capersfits better
  3. Tarragonfits better
  4. Parsleythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against rabbit, flour, butter, cream. 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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