Why it works: Rabbit and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,448 recipes. Both carry decanal, which smells soap, orange peel. The science ↓
Young Rabbits
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare
Clean and truss the rabbits.
Rub the rabbits with butter or lard.
Cover the rabbits with fat bacon.
Roast and serve
Roast the rabbits for 20 to 35 minutes, depending on their size.
Serve with Rabbit Sauce or Tarragon Sauce.
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.
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Rabbit + buttertop 15% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together1,448 recipes
Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Young rabbits
- Provide the lean meat that is the main component of the dish.
- Butter or lard
- Adds fat that coats the meat, helping it brown and keeping it moist as it roasts.
- Fat bacon
- Covers the lean meat, basting it with fat and protecting it from drying out in the oven.
The step that matters
Roast the rabbits for 20 to 35 minutes, depending on their size. Rabbit meat is very lean and dries out quickly. Size varies a lot between animals, so checking early and using the lower end of the range for smaller rabbits helps keep the meat tender and juicy.
“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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