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Roast Rabbit or Squirrel

Roast rabbit or squirrel seasoned with salt, onion, celery seed, sage, and butter, baked until cooked.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Celery and sage match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 723 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Roast Rabbit or Squirrel

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Split the rabbit or squirrel through the breast and soak in salt water for one hour.

  2. Place the meat in a pan and cover it with sliced onion.

Season and roast

  1. Sprinkle with celery seed and sage, then add butter on top.

  2. Roast in a 400°F (200°C) oven until cooked through.

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. Celery + sagetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together723 recipes

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

  2. Onion + celerytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,518 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Onion + sagetop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,628 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Onion + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 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 or squirrel
Forms the main body of the dish; its lean meat firms and browns as it roasts.
Coarse sea salt
Salt in the soaking water seasons the meat and helps it hold moisture during roasting.
Onion
Softens and sweetens as it roasts, adding flavour to the meat and pan juices.
Butter
Adds fat that carries flavour, keeps the meat moist, and promotes browning.
Dried sage
Adds a savoury, herbal aroma to the meat.
Celery seed
Adds a mildly bitter, savoury aroma that complements the meat.

The step that matters

Roast until cooked through. Rabbit and squirrel are very lean, so they dry out quickly once cooked through. Checking doneness early and stopping at the point of cooking protects tenderness and juiciness.

Swap the sage

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against rabbit, onion, celery, 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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