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Cutlets of Rabbit, No. 2

Rabbit cutlets simmered in clarified butter, served with a mushroom and ham sauce, finished with breadcrumbs and a stock reduction.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 21 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and parsley 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, No. 2

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the cutlets

  1. Remove the fillets from the back of the rabbit and divide them into 10 cutlets.

  2. Simmer the cutlets in clarified butter with pepper and salt until white and firm.

  3. Set the simmered cutlets aside to cool.

Make the mushroom coating

  1. In a frying pan, combine mushrooms, parsley, ham, and onion with bacon and stir over heat for 5 minutes.

  2. Dredge the mixture in flour, then add stock, lemon juice, nutmeg, sugar, and salt.

  3. Boil the mixture for 10 minutes.

  4. Remove the mixture from heat and stir in egg yolks.

  5. Pour the sauce onto a flat dish and let it cool.

  6. Coat the fillets with the sauce and let it set.

  7. Brush the set fillets with egg whites and cover them with bread crumbs.

Fry and serve

  1. Fry the coated fillets in boiling fat until light brown.

  2. Arrange the fried fillets in a circle on a plate.

Make the sauce and quenelles

  1. For the sauce, brown rabbit bones in butter with a bay leaf and thyme.

  2. Add weak stock to the browned bones and simmer for 1 hour, then strain the sauce.

  3. Brown butter with flour, add stock, and simmer for 5 minutes.

  4. Stir in sherry, white pepper, and salt if needed.

  5. Make quenelles from the remaining rabbit meat by scraping, pounding, and passing through a sieve.

  6. Mix the quenelles with bread panada.

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

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

  2. Butter + mushroomtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

  3. Parsley + oniontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

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

  4. Mushroom + oniontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,626 recipes

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

  5. Pepper + oniontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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

What each ingredient does

Egg yolks
Thicken the mushroom mixture and help it set firm as it cools.
Egg whites
Act as a glue so the bread crumbs stick to the coating.
Flour
Thickens the sauce and helps the coating brown when fried.
Fine fresh bread crumbs
Form a crisp, golden outer crust when the fillets are fried.
Clarified butter
Cooks the cutlets gently and adds richness and browning to the frying.

The step that matters

Stirring in the egg yolks. Adding the yolks off the heat lets them thicken the mixture gently. Over direct heat, the proteins in the yolks can scramble into lumps.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (rabbit, butter, pepper, mushroom, parsley, ham, flour):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Carrotfits better
  3. Spinachfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against rabbit, butter, pepper, mushroom, parsley, ham, 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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