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Pilau of Rabbit

A rice dish with rabbit, onions, ginger, lemon, butter, milk, peppercorns, cloves, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Ginger and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,038 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Pilau of Rabbit

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the meat

  1. Cut up the rabbit or fowl.

  2. Pound the onions in a mortar, extract the juice, and mix it with ginger, salt, and lemon juice. Rub this mixture into the meat.

Cook the onions and meat

  1. Slice the remaining onions and fry them in butter until brown.

  2. Remove the onions and add the meat to the pan, letting them stew together.

  3. Half boil the rice in broth.

Bake and serve

  1. Combine the meat, rice, milk, peppercorns, cloves, and more salt in a jar.

  2. Secure the jar and bake until done, adding broth if needed to moisten.

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. Ginger + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,038 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Ginger + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,154 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  3. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  4. Rice + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,374 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Onion + gingertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,595 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

Rabbit or fowl
Provides the main protein, which becomes tender through stewing and baking.
Onions
Juice flavors the meat, and sliced onions fried in butter brown for sweetness and depth.
Butter
Fat for frying the onions, adding richness and browning flavor.
Rice
Forms the body of the pilaf, absorbing broth and milk as it cooks.
Milk
Adds moisture and richness to the rice during baking.

The step that matters

Half boil the rice in broth. Partly cooking the rice before baking lets it finish absorbing liquid without turning mushy. Adding broth as needed keeps the grains moist during the bake.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (rabbit, ginger, lemon, butter, rice, milk, clove):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Carrotfits better
  3. Asparagusfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against rabbit, ginger, lemon, butter, rice, milk, clove. 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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