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Fried Rabbit

Fried rabbit served with lemon gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Fried Rabbit

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the rabbit

  1. Boil the rabbit in water for 5-7 minutes, then drain and let cool.

  2. Cut the rabbit into joints.

Fry the rabbit

  1. Dip each joint in beaten eggs, then coat with seasoned bread crumbs.

  2. Fry the joints in butter over moderate heat for 12-15 minutes.

Make the sauce and serve

  1. Simmer lemon rind in a little gravy until flavored.

  2. Boil the rabbit liver for 5 minutes, cool, and mince it.

  3. Thicken the gravy with butter and flour, add the minced liver, and boil for 1 minute.

  4. Stir in cream and lemon juice, if using.

  5. Serve the rabbit with the sauce poured underneath.

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. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

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

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

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

  4. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

Butter and flour 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

Eggs
Bind the bread crumbs to the rabbit joints so the coating adheres while frying.
Bread crumbs
Form a crisp, browned coating on the outside of the fried joints.
Flour
Thickens the butter and gravy into a smooth sauce.
Butter
Fries the joints to a golden brown and adds richness to the gravy.
Cream
Adds richness and a softer, smoother texture to the sauce.

The step that matters

Fry the joints in butter over moderate heat. Moderate heat lets the coated joints cook through to the centre while the crumb browns gradually. Higher heat would brown the coating before the meat is cooked, while lower heat would leave it greasy and pale.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Lemonthe original
  2. Raisinfits about as well
  3. Coconutfits less well
  4. Figfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against rabbit, egg, bread, pepper, butter, flour, 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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