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Baked Rabbits with Rice

A baked rabbit dish served with rice, butter, egg yolks, and chutney.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Rabbit and rice work together. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 252 recipes. Both carry decanal, which smells soap, orange peel. The science ↓

Baked Rabbits with Rice

Oven, in the book's wordsA brisk oven

Ingredients

Directions

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

Prepare the rabbit

  1. Season the rabbit joints with coarse sea salt.

  2. Melt the bacon fat in a saucepan, add the rabbit, and steam over low heat until lightly browned.

  3. Remove the rabbit and set aside.

Cook the rice

  1. Wash the rice and place it in a saucepan with the stock and mace.

  2. Simmer until the rice is tender and has absorbed the liquid, then let it cool.

  3. Stir the butter and egg yolks into the rice.

Assemble and bake

  1. Butter a deep dish, place the rabbit pieces in it, and pour chutney over them.

  2. Spread the rice mixture on top and layer with the beaten egg yolks.

  3. Bake in a brisk oven at 400°F (200°C) until golden.

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 + ricetop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together252 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Rice + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,645 recipes

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

  4. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Rice + macetop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together932 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

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

What each ingredient does

Rabbit
Provides the main meat, which browns lightly before baking.
Rice
Absorbs the stock and forms the soft, bulky layer that holds the dish together.
Bacon fat or dripping
Carries heat for browning the rabbit and adds savoury richness.
Egg yolks
Enrich the rice and set during baking to give a custard-like texture and golden colour.
Butter
Adds fat and richness to the rice mixture and helps it brown on top.
Chutney
Adds sweetness and acidity that flavour the rabbit as it bakes.

The step that matters

Let the rice cool before adding the egg yolks. Hot rice can scramble the raw egg yolks unevenly instead of blending them smoothly, so cooling it slightly keeps the mixture silky and helps it set evenly in the oven.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Capersfits better
  3. Turmericfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against rabbit, rice, butter, egg. 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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