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Roast Rabbit

A rabbit stuffed with breadcrumb and suet forcemeat, coated in butter and flour, baked with bacon and served with a wine‑broth sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and thyme match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,973 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Roast Rabbit

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the forcemeat

  1. Mix breadcrumbs, beef suet, nutmeg, pepper, salt, lemon peel, and lemon thyme to make a forcemeat.

  2. Beat the eggs and combine with the forcemeat to form a paste.

Stuff and shape the rabbit

  1. Spread the rabbit on a table.

  2. Fill the rabbit with the forcemeat.

  3. Sew the rabbit up.

  4. Skewer the rabbit into shape.

Coat and wrap

  1. Rub the outside of the rabbit with butter.

  2. Dust the rabbit with flour.

  3. Attach thin bacon slices to the rabbit using small skewers.

Stew and serve

  1. Stew the rabbit in broth with white wine, covered, until cooked through.

  2. Remove the bacon and skim the fat from the broth.

  3. Season the broth to taste.

  4. Thicken the broth with arrowroot.

  5. Pour the hot broth over the rabbit 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. Lemon + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,973 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Nutmeg + thymetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,907 recipes

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

  4. Pepper + thymetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,585 recipes

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

  5. Nutmeg + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Rabbit
Lean meat that forms the main body of the dish and absorbs flavour during stewing.
Eggs
Bind the forcemeat into a paste that holds together when sliced.
Breadcrumbs
Absorb moisture and give the forcemeat body so it stays soft rather than dense.
Beef suet
Adds fat that keeps the forcemeat moist and rich during cooking.
White wine
Adds acidity and aroma to the stewing liquid, balancing the rich meat.
Bacon
Its fat bastes the lean rabbit as it cooks, helping prevent drying.

The step that matters

Stewing the rabbit covered until cooked through. Rabbit is very lean and dries out quickly. The lid holds in moisture, and cooking only until cooked through avoids toughening the muscle fibres.

“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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