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Cutlets of Rabbit

Cutlets of rabbit coated in parsley, bread, and Parmesan, fried and served with bacon, brown sauce, and peas or macaroni.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Cutlets of Rabbit

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the cutlets

  1. Remove the fillets from the back of the rabbit and take off the underskin.

  2. Cut each fillet across, then slice the thick pieces into six long slices and the thin pieces into four, making ten cutlets.

Coat and fry

  1. Dip each cutlet in the beaten egg, then coat with a mixture of minced parsley, grated bread, and Parmesan cheese seasoned with pepper and salt.

  2. Fry the cutlets in boiling fat until golden brown.

Dish and serve

  1. Dish the cutlets in a circle, placing a slice of fried bacon between each cutlet.

  2. Pour brown sauce around the cutlets and fill the center with green peas or dressed macaroni.

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 + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  2. Bread + peastop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together804 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexyl acetate (fruity, apple).

  3. Parsley + peastop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,885 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  4. Egg + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  5. Parmesan cheese + peastop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together366 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl 2-methylbutyrate (apple, fatty).

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

What each ingredient does

Rabbit
Provides the lean meat that is shaped into the cutlets.
Egg
Binds the crumb coating to the cutlets so it adheres during frying.
Grated bread
Forms a crisp, golden crumb coating when fried.
Parmesan cheese
Adds savory flavor and helps the coating brown in the hot fat.
Parsley
Adds fresh aroma and flavor to the crumb coating.

The step that matters

Fry the cutlets in boiling fat until golden brown. The coating is set and browned by hot fat, so the fat must be very hot. If it is too cool, the crumbs absorb grease, turn soggy, and the lean rabbit inside can dry out while the outside lags behind.

Swap the peas

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (rabbit, egg, parsley, bread, parmesan cheese, pepper, sauce):

  1. Beansfits better
  2. Chestnutfits about as well
  3. Walnutfits about as well
  4. Peasthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against rabbit, egg, parsley, bread, parmesan cheese, pepper, sauce. 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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