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A rabbit cooked in butter, served with a lemon cream sauce made from gravy, liver, flour, and lemon juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Modern Cookery

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the rabbit

  1. Fry the rabbit in butter over moderate heat for 12 to 15 minutes.

Make the sauce

  1. Simmer 2 or 3 strips of lemon rind in a little gravy until well flavored.

  2. Boil the rabbit liver for 5 minutes, let it cool, then mince it.

  3. Thicken the gravy with 1 ounce of butter and 1 teaspoon of flour.

  4. Add the minced liver and boil the sauce for 1 minute.

  5. Stir in 2 tablespoons of cream and a small amount of lemon juice.

Serve

  1. Dish the rabbit, pour the sauce over it, and serve immediately.

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 + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: acetaldehyde (pungent, ethereal).

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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, cooked by frying until done and tender on the outside.
Butter
Adds richness and helps the rabbit brown in the pan.
Flour
Thickens the gravy so the sauce clings to the rabbit.
Cream
Adds richness and a smooth, silky texture to the sauce.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the cream sauce.

The step that matters

Stir in the cream and lemon juice gently and avoid boiling after adding them. Cream can curdle or separate when boiled hard or acidified too strongly, so the sauce should be finished with gentle heat.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Coconutfits about as well
  2. Raisinfits about as well
  3. Lemonthe original
  4. Applefits about as well

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