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Barbecued Rabbit

A roasted rabbit seasoned with salt, pepper, butter, vinegar, and mustard, served with parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 ↓

Barbecued Rabbit

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Clean and wash the rabbit, then open it along the underside and lay it flat in salted water for 30 minutes.

  2. Wipe the rabbit dry and make 8‑10 gashes across the backbone.

Cook and serve

  1. Broil the rabbit whole, turning often until browned and tender.

  2. Place the rabbit on a hot dish, season with salt and pepper, and add plenty of butter, turning to soak it up.

  3. Cover and place in a 400°F (200°C) oven for 5 minutes.

  4. Heat vinegar and mustard in a tin cup, then pour over the hot rabbit before serving, garnished with parsley.

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. Vinegar + mustardtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Mustard + parsleytop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,588 recipes

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

  4. Pepper + mustardtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,430 recipes

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

  5. Rabbit + mustardtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together56 recipes

    Shared aroma: geraniol (rose, geranium).

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

What each ingredient does

Rabbit
Provides the meat that broils until browned and tender.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, coating the rabbit as it is turned.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens the flavour of the rich, buttery meat.
Prepared mustard
Adds sharp, tangy flavour to the warm vinegar sauce.

The step that matters

Broiling the rabbit whole. Turning it often keeps the surface from scorching before the thick parts cook through, so it browns evenly and turns tender.

Swap the parsley

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

  1. Tarragonfits better
  2. Capersfits better
  3. Thymefits about as well
  4. Parsleythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against rabbit, pepper, butter, vinegar, mustard. 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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