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Sauce

Sauce to Serve with Roast Rabbit

A savory sauce made from rabbit liver, butter, stock, eschalot, vinegar, and rabbit drippings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and vinegar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,814 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Sauce to Serve with Roast Rabbit

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Pound the liver of the rabbit.

  2. Melt the butter in a saucepan over high heat.

  3. Add the pounded liver, salt, and pepper, stirring with a wooden spoon.

  4. Pour in the stock or water while stirring.

  5. Chop the eschalot and add it to the mixture.

  6. Add the drippings from the rabbit and stir.

  7. Put the sauce into the dripping-pan.

Baste and serve

  1. Baste the rabbit with the sauce during the last hour of cooking.

  2. Serve the sauce in a sauceboat.

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. Pepper + vinegartop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,814 recipes

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

  2. Liver + rabbittop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together233 recipes

    Shared aroma: geraniol (rose, geranium).

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

    Shared aroma: 2-pentylpyridine (fat).

  5. Liver + buttertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,065 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Liver of the rabbit
Pounded into the sauce, it breaks down and thickens the liquid while adding rich, savoury body.
Butter
Carries the flavour and gives the sauce richness and a smooth, glossy mouthfeel.
Drippings from the rabbit
Adds concentrated meat flavour gathered from the roasting pan.
Stock or water
Thins the mixture into a pourable sauce and carries the other flavours.
Eschalot
Adds a mild, aromatic onion-like sharpness to the sauce.

The step that matters

Melting the butter over high heat before adding the liver. Butter over high heat can brown quickly and burn, giving a bitter taste. Watch it closely and keep stirring so the liver and seasonings blend smoothly into a clean-flavoured sauce.

“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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