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Roast Rabbit or Hare

Roasted rabbit stuffed with forcemeat, served with a thickened liver stock sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Veal and liver match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 392 recipes. Both carry enoic acid, which smells butter, cheesy. The science ↓

Roast Rabbit or Hare

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the rabbit

  1. Wipe the rabbit with a clean cloth and stuff it with the forcemeat.

  2. Sew or skewer the rabbit closed, fastening the head upright and drawing the hind legs forward and fore legs back with skewers and string.

  3. Lay a piece of fat bacon over the back.

Roast

  1. Heat 2 tablespoons of dripping in a tin, add the rabbit, and roast for about 1 hour, basting frequently.

  2. Once cooked, place the rabbit on a hot dish.

Make the sauce

  1. Pour off the fat from the tin, add ½ pint of stock made from the liver, stir well, and season.

  2. Thicken the sauce with ½ tablespoon of flour mixed with cold water, boil again, and strain around the rabbit.

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. Veal + livertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together392 recipes

    Shared aroma: enoic acid (butter, cheesy).

  2. Rabbit + flourtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetaldehyde (pungent, ethereal).

  3. Rabbit + livertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together233 recipes

    Shared aroma: geraniol (rose, geranium).

  4. Rabbit + vealtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together441 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-pentylpyridine (fat).

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

    Shared aroma: 2-pentylpyridine (fat).

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

What each ingredient does

Rabbit
Forms the main meat that is roasted until cooked through and tender.
Veal forcemeat
Stuffing that adds richness and moisture to the lean rabbit meat as it cooks.
Fat bacon
Laid over the back to baste the lean meat with fat during roasting.
Dripping
Fat used to start the roast, helping the outside brown and the meat stay moist.
Flour
Thickens the stock-based sauce so it coats the rabbit rather than running off.

The step that matters

Basting frequently during the roast. Lean rabbit dries out easily in the oven. Spooning hot fat over the meat keeps the surface moist and helps it brown evenly.

“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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