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Rabbit, Baked

A baked rabbit seasoned with salt and pepper, wrapped in bacon, served with a brown roux gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Rabbit and milk work together. They rank in the top 18% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 284 recipes. Both carry decanal, which smells soap, orange peel. The science ↓

Rabbit, Baked

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the rabbit

  1. Skin, draw, and wash the rabbit thoroughly.

  2. Soak the rabbit in milk and water for 1–2 hours.

  3. Drain and cut the rabbit into small joints.

  4. Lightly season with salt and pepper.

Bake and serve

  1. Place the rabbit in a baking dish and cover each piece with bacon.

  2. Bake in a 350 °F (175 °C) oven until cooked through.

  3. Arrange the rabbit and bacon on a serving dish.

  4. Skim the grease from the baking tin and thicken the gravy with brown roux.

  5. Pour the gravy over the rabbit and serve hot with mashed potatoes.

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. Rabbit + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together284 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  2. Rabbit + peppertop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,334 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-pentylpyridine (fat).

  3. Milk + peppertop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together26,984 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl 2-methylbutyrate (fruity, apple).

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

What each ingredient does

Rabbit
Forms the main body of the dish, cooking to tender meat when baked through.
Bacon
Covers the rabbit, adding fat that bastes the meat and browns the surface as it bakes.
Brown roux
Thickens the pan gravy, giving it body and a deeper, toasted flavour.
Milk
Soaking in milk and water is meant to mellow the rabbit's flavour and keep the meat moist.

The step that matters

Skimming the grease before thickening the gravy. Fat left in the baking tin can make the gravy greasy and split its texture. Removing most of it before adding roux gives a smoother, cleaner-tasting sauce.

“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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