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To Fry Rabbits

Fried rabbit pieces seasoned with parsley, butter, salt, and nutmeg.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,062 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

To Fry Rabbits

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wash the rabbits.

  2. Soak them in cold water for 2 hours.

  3. Cut the rabbits into small pieces.

  4. Dry the pieces with a cloth.

  5. Dredge the pieces in flour.

  6. Sprinkle the pieces with chopped parsley.

Fry and serve

  1. Fry the rabbits in butter until golden brown.

  2. Season the gravy.

  3. Pour the gravy over the fried rabbits.

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. Parsley + nutmegtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,062 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  2. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + parsleytop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,675 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Rabbit + flourtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetaldehyde (pungent, ethereal).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Rabbits
Provide the main meat, which sets the dish's body and texture.
Flour
Coats the pieces so the surface browns and crisps when fried.
Butter
Fat for frying that carries heat and adds browning and rich flavor.
Nutmeg
Adds a warm, aromatic note to the seasoning.

The step that matters

Dry the pieces before dredging. Surface moisture makes flour clump and steam instead of browning, so the pieces should be patted dry before they are coated and fried.

Swap the parsley

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Capersfits about as well
  3. Turmericfits about as well
  4. Parsleythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against rabbit, flour, butter, nutmeg. 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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