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Roast Rabbit

A rabbit roasted with salt, bread crumbs, butter, herbs, and fat pork, served with lemon garnish.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Sage and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 887 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Roast Rabbit

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderately hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderately hot oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

  1. Soak the rabbit in salt water for 30 minutes.

  2. Rinse the rabbit in cold water and dry it.

  3. Rub the inside of the rabbit with salt.

Stuff and season

  1. Fill the rabbit with a mixture of bread crumbs, butter, pepper, salt, and sage.

  2. Sew up the opening of the rabbit.

  3. Place the rabbit in a roasting pan.

  4. Sprinkle the outside of the rabbit with pepper and salt.

  5. Lay thin slices of fat salt pork on top of the rabbit.

Roast and serve

  1. Roast the rabbit in a 350°F (175°C) oven, basting frequently with butter and water, for about 1 hour.

  2. Garnish the rabbit with lemon slices.

  3. Thicken the gravy 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. Sage + lemontop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together887 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

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

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

  3. Pepper + sagetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,388 recipes

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

  4. Rabbit + porktop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together832 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Rabbit
Is the main protein, whose lean meat is cooked through during the long roast.
Bread crumbs
Soak up butter and juices inside the rabbit, keeping the stuffing moist and tender.
Butter
Adds richness and fat that promotes browning and a glossy finish when basted.
Fat salt pork
Lays over the rabbit to baste it with fat, adding savoriness and keeping the lean meat moist.
Dried sage
Adds an earthy, aromatic flavor to the bread crumb stuffing.

The step that matters

Basting during the roast. Rabbit is very lean and dries out quickly. Frequent basting with fat and liquid helps keep the meat moist and promotes even browning across the surface.

“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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