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How to Roast a Rabbit Hare Fashion

A roasted rabbit flavored with bacon, butter, flour, parsley, and liver gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

How to Roast a Rabbit Hare Fashion

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the rabbit

  1. Lard the rabbit with bacon.

  2. Roast the rabbit as you would a hare.

  3. If the rabbit is not larded, prepare a white sauce.

  4. Baste the rabbit with good butter.

  5. Dredge the rabbit with a little flour.

Roast

  1. Cook for about 30 minutes at a very high heat; if small, 20 minutes will suffice.

Make the liver sauce and serve

  1. Boil the liver with a bunch of parsley.

  2. Chop the liver finely.

  3. Melt some butter.

  4. Mix in half the liver and parsley.

  5. Pour the mixture into the serving dish.

  6. Garnish the dish with the remaining liver and parsley.

  7. Make gravy sauce to serve with it.

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. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Flour + parsleytop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,675 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Rabbit + flourtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetaldehyde (pungent, ethereal).

  4. Butter + parsleytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together28,563 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Rabbit
Is the main meat, cooked by roasting until its flesh is tender and cooked through.
Bacon
Larding adds fat and moisture that keep the lean rabbit from drying out during roasting.
Butter
Basting adds fat that promotes browning and a rich flavour on the roasted surface.
Flour
Dredging coats the surface, helping it brown and thicken the juices into a gravy.
Liver (in the method)
Chopped and mixed with butter and parsley, it adds a rich, savoury flavour to the dish.

The step that matters

Cook for about 30 minutes at a very high heat. Lean rabbit dries out quickly, so high heat sears the outside fast while the timing keeps the inside from overcooking. Smaller rabbits need less time.

Swap the parsley

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

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Turmericfits about as well
  4. Parsleythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against rabbit, butter, 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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