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Rabbits Baked

A baked rabbit dish seasoned with salt, pepper, bacon, and butter, steamed in boiling water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Rabbit and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,448 recipes. Both carry decanal, which smells soap, orange peel. The science ↓

Rabbits Baked

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Preheat oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. Place rabbits in a baking pan.

  3. Sprinkle rabbits with coarse sea salt and black pepper.

  4. Top each rabbit with a slice of bacon.

  5. Pour boiling water into the bottom of the pan.

Steam and brown

  1. Cover the pan with another pan of equal size and steam for 15-20 minutes.

  2. Remove the cover, baste rabbits with butter, and let them brown.

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  2. Rabbit + peppertop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,334 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-pentylpyridine (fat).

  3. Pepper + buttertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Rabbits
Form the main body of the dish, cooking to tender meat when steamed and baked.
Bacon
Adds fat and savory flavor that bastes the meat as it renders.
Butter
Promotes browning and adds richness to the surface when basted.

The step that matters

Remove the cover, baste rabbits with butter, and let them brown.. Steaming keeps the meat moist, but the surface only browns once the cover is off and the dry heat can act on it. Butter helps that browning and adds flavor.

“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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