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Rabbits Surprised

A dish of roasted rabbits stuffed with a mixture of chopped meat, parsley, lemon peel, beef marrow, cream, egg yolks, and butter, finished with gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Rabbits Surprised

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the rabbits

  1. Skewer and stuff the rabbits as for roasting.

  2. Roast the rabbits and remove the meat from the bones, leaving the bones whole.

Make the stuffing

  1. Chop the meat finely and mix with parsley, lemon peel, beef marrow, cream, and a little salt.

  2. In a mortar, beat the yolks of the hard-boiled eggs with butter, then mix with the meat mixture.

  3. Stew the mixture for five minutes, then lay it on the rabbits where the meat was removed.

Brown and serve

  1. Brown the rabbits all over with a salamander.

  2. Pour thick gravy into the dish and place myrtle in their mouths.

  3. Serve hot with the livers boiled and frothed.

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. Parsley + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

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

  2. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Rabbit + beeftop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together252 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Rabbit + creamtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together409 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

  5. Rabbit + lemontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together626 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Young rabbits
Provide the main meat, which is roasted and then stuffed and browned.
Beef marrow
Adds richness and fat, keeping the chopped meat filling moist and savoury.
Cream
Adds moisture and softness to the chopped meat mixture.
Hard-boiled egg yolks
Bind the filling together and add a rich, smooth texture when beaten with butter.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, helping the egg yolks blend into a smooth paste.

The step that matters

Stew the stuffing before laying it on the rabbits. Stewing cooks the chopped meat and binds the egg and butter mixture, so the filling holds its shape and is safe to eat when placed on the rabbits.

“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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