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Spiced Rabbit

A rabbit baked with spices, vinegar, and stock, served with a gravy made from its drippings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Celery and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,810 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Spiced Rabbit

Ingredients

Directions

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

Prepare the rabbit

  1. Wash the rabbit in soda water.

  2. Disjoint the hind legs, cut off the saddle, and remove the forequarters to make nine pieces.

  3. Soak the rabbit pieces in salt water for about one hour.

  4. Place the rabbit pieces in a dish and cover them with weak vinegar.

  5. Allow the rabbit to marinate overnight.

Bake and serve

  1. Remove the rabbit from the marinate, lightly salt each piece, and arrange them in a baking pan.

  2. Chop the onion and sprinkle it over the rabbit pieces.

  3. Add the bay leaf, peppercorns, celery or celery leaves, parsley, stock, and some of the vinegar used for soaking.

  4. Cover the pan and bake in a moderate oven (350 °F / 175 °C) until tender.

  5. Transfer the rabbit to a hot dish.

  6. Make gravy from the stock in the pan, using the drippings and enough browned flour to thicken.

  7. Season the gravy well and pour it over the rabbit.

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 + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,810 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  4. Parsley + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,675 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Rabbit + oniontop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,292 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
Forms the main body of the dish, providing the meat that is tenderised and cooked.
Weak vinegar
Acidity in the marinade helps tenderise the meat and adds a sharp, tangy note.
Stock
Moist liquid in the baking pan that braises the rabbit and forms the base of the gravy.
Drippings
Adds fat and savoury flavour to the gravy.
Browned flour
Thickens the gravy and adds a toasted, nutty flavour.

The step that matters

Bake covered until tender. Rabbit is lean and dries out easily, so baking covered in moist liquid at a moderate heat lets the connective tissue break down slowly. Baking too hot or uncovered toughens the meat before it becomes tender.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (rabbit, vinegar, celery, parsley, flour):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Mustardfits better
  3. Turnipfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against rabbit, vinegar, celery, parsley, flour. 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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