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To Roast Rabbits

Roasted rabbit served with a liver butter and currant jelly.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

To Roast Rabbits

Ingredients

Directions

Roast the rabbit

  1. Baste the rabbit with good butter and dredge with flour.

  2. Roast for 30 to 50 minutes, depending on size.

Make the liver sauce

  1. Boil the liver with parsley, chop it fine, and mix with melted butter.

Serve

  1. Pour the liver mixture over the rabbit when dished.

  2. Serve with currant jelly.

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. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Flour + parsleytop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,675 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: acetaldehyde (pungent, ethereal).

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

    Shared aroma: geraniol (rose, geranium).

  5. Butter + parsleytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together28,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Rabbit
Is the main protein that cooks through during roasting and becomes tender.
Butter
Adds moisture and richness, and helps the surface brown as it roasts.
Flour
Coats the surface, helping the outside brown and thicken the pan juices slightly.
Rabbit liver
Is chopped and mixed with butter to make a rich, savory topping for the rabbit.
Currant jelly
Adds sweetness and acidity that balance the rich, savory meat and liver.

The step that matters

Roasting time. Rabbit is very lean, so it dries out quickly. Roasting only until just cooked, and judging by size, keeps the meat moist and tender.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (rabbit, butter, flour, liver, parsley):

  1. Lemonfits better
  2. Limefits better
  3. Coconutfits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against rabbit, butter, flour, liver, parsley. 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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