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Fillets of Rabbits En Attelets

Rabbit fillets marinated with vinegar, vegetables, and livers, fried in lard, served with a tarragon vinegar butter sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,053 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Fillets of Rabbits En Attelets

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut each rabbit fillet into two long slices.

  2. Marinate the fillets in a mixture of vinegar, water, carrots, onion, parsley, peppercorns, salt, garlic, bay leaf, chicken livers, and mushrooms for 8 hours.

Cook and serve

  1. Heat lard in a pan until very hot and fry the marinated fillets until golden brown.

  2. Place the cooked fillets on paper to drain excess fat.

  3. Arrange the fillets on a serving dish and garnish with the livers and mushrooms.

  4. Reduce tarragon vinegar in a pan until thickened.

  5. Stir in butter sauce until hot.

  6. Add an additional tablespoon of tarragon vinegar to the sauce and pour it carefully between the fillets.

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. Carrot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  2. Onion + garlictop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together29,058 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  3. Parsley + garlictop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,308 recipes

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

  4. Carrot + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,873 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  5. Carrot + oniontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Rabbit fillets
Provide the lean meat that is sliced, marinated and fried to golden brown.
Vinegar
Acidifies the marinade, which helps tenderise the meat and adds tang.
Chicken livers
Add rich, savoury flavour to the marinade and serve as a garnish.
Mushrooms
Add earthy savoury flavour to the marinade and add texture as a garnish.
Tarragon vinegar
Reduced to a thickened base, it gives the sauce its sharp, aromatic tarragon flavour.
Butter sauce
Stirred into the reduced vinegar to enrich the sauce with fat and body.

The step that matters

Frying the marinated fillets in very hot lard. Lard must be very hot so the surface browns quickly and seals in juices. If the pan is not hot enough, the meat steams, turns grey and becomes greasy and dry.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (rabbit, vinegar, carrot, onion, parsley, garlic, chicken):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Tarragonfits better
  3. Celeryfits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against rabbit, vinegar, carrot, onion, parsley, garlic, chicken. 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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