Name: Rabbits
Ingredients: 1 rabbit; coarse sea salt; pepper; butter

Why it works: Rabbit and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,448 recipes. Both carry decanal, which smells soap, orange peel. The science ↓

Rabbits

Ingredients

1 rabbit
coarse sea salt
pepper
butter

Directions

Open the rabbit down the belly.
Joint the legs at the rump to allow them to turn back along the sides.
Turn the shoulders back to meet the legs, lying side by side.
Skewer the head down to the right shoulder.
For roasting, turn the legs back without disjointing.
Insert two skewers to secure the legs and shoulders.
Sew up the belly after stuffing, only slitting as necessary.

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.

Rabbit + buttertop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,448 recipes

Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).
Rabbit + peppertop 18% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,334 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-pentylpyridine (fat).
Pepper + buttertop 21% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together85,593 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).