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Roasted Rabbit

A rabbit stuffed with bread crumbs, onion, spices, and butter, then roasted or baked.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Roasted Rabbit

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the rabbit

  1. Cut off the rabbit's head, open it, and wash it clean.

  2. Fill the rabbit with a dressing made of bread crumbs, chopped onion, pepper, salt, mace, and enough butter to bind the crumbs.

  3. Sew the rabbit up after filling it.

Roast

  1. Place the rabbit on a spit before the fire and baste it with butter while roasting.

  2. Alternatively, place it in a pan with water and bake it.

Make the gravy

  1. For gravy, combine water, butter, chopped onion, pepper, salt, and mace to taste in a saucepan.

  2. Add wine if preferred.

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

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

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

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

  3. Rabbit + oniontop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,292 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Onion + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Rabbit + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,448 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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, cooked through by roasting or baking.
Bread crumbs
Absorb butter and juices in the stuffing, keeping the dressing moist and holding its shape.
Butter
Adds richness and moisture, and browns the surface while basting.
Onion
Adds savoury aroma and flavour to the dressing and gravy.

The step that matters

Sewing the rabbit after filling it. Stuffing expands as it heats and can push out of an unsealed cavity, and a loosely closed body cooks unevenly, so the seam should be closed firmly before roasting.

Swap the mace

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against rabbit, bread, 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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