Name: Rabbits Larded
Ingredients: 1 rabbit, back part boned with legs on; 1 lemon, inside cut into small dice; ½ cup cullis (or rich meat sauce); 1 liver from the rabbit, boiled and chopped fine; 2 tablespoons scalded parsley, chopped; 2 tablespoons chopped mushrooms

Why it works: Lemon and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Rabbits Larded

Ingredients

1 rabbit, back part boned with legs on
1 lemon, inside cut into small dice
½ cup cullis (or rich meat sauce)
1 liver from the rabbit, boiled and chopped fine
2 tablespoons scalded parsley, chopped
2 tablespoons chopped mushrooms

Directions

Prepare

Bone the back part of the rabbit, leaving the legs on, and sew it up.

Cook the rabbit

Braise or roast the rabbit until cooked through.
If braised, glaze the rabbit before serving.

Make the sauce and serve

Prepare the sauce by mixing the chopped liver, parsley, and mushrooms.
Boil the lemon dice with the cullis and serve it around 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.

Lemon + parsleytop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together14,037 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).
Parsley + mushroomtop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together6,132 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).
Rabbit + meattop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together315 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).
Rabbit + mushroomtop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together406 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).
Meat + mushroomtop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,423 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

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

What each ingredient does

Rabbit: Provides the main meat, which cooks through during braising or roasting.
Lemon: Adds acidity and aroma that cut the richness of the meat and sauce.
Cullis: Forms the rich, savoury base of the sauce that is served around the rabbit.
Rabbit liver: Adds a rich, earthy depth to the sauce when boiled and chopped fine.

“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.