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Roast Rabbit

A rabbit roasted with vinegar, port wine, spices, and a liver sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Roast Rabbit

Ingredients

Directions

Marinate

  1. In a bowl, mix vinegar, port wine, black pepper, and allspice.

  2. Place the rabbit in the mixture and baste it often for 2 days.

Roast and make the sauce

  1. Stuff the rabbit and roast it as usual.

  2. Boil the liver until tender, then chop it finely with parsley.

  3. In a saucepan, combine chopped liver, butter, gravy, sauce, lemon peel, and nutmeg.

  4. Boil the sauce slightly and pour it under the rabbit.

Serve

  1. Garnish with forcemeat balls before serving.

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 + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. Pepper + allspicetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,395 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Allspice + lemontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,083 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  4. Vinegar + port winetop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together598 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-ethyl-2-methoxyphenol (smoky, clove).

  5. Port wine + buttertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,499 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

What each ingredient does

Rabbit
Is the main protein, cooked by roasting after marinating.
Vinegar
Acidity in the marinade that tenderises the meat and adds tang.
Port wine
Adds sweetness and depth to the marinade and the flavour of the meat.
Butter
Adds fat and richness to the liver sauce, giving a smoother texture.
Liver (in the method)
Adds savoury depth and body to the sauce once chopped and combined.

The step that matters

Basting the rabbit over 2 days. Lean rabbit dries out easily, so regular basting in the acidic marinade keeps the surface moist and lets the flavours penetrate the meat slowly.

Swap the allspice

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (rabbit, vinegar, port wine, pepper, butter, sauce, lemon):

  1. Tarragonfits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Thymefits better
  4. Allspicethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against rabbit, vinegar, port wine, pepper, butter, sauce, lemon. 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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