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Rabbits, Fried

A dish of rabbit joints fried in butter, optionally coated in beaten eggs and bread crumbs, served with a liver and parsley sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Rabbits, Fried

Ingredients

Directions

Fry the rabbit

  1. Heat butter in a skillet over medium heat.

  2. Fry the rabbit joints until golden brown, about 10-15 minutes.

  3. If using, beat the eggs and dip the rabbit in them, then coat with bread crumbs before frying.

Make the sauce and serve

  1. For the sauce, combine the chopped liver, parsley, and butter in a small pan and heat until warm.

  2. Thicken the gravy in the pan with the drippings from the rabbit.

  3. Garnish with fried or dried parsley before serving.

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 + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  2. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  3. Egg + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  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).

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

What each ingredient does

Rabbit
Provides the meat that is browned and cooked through in the butter.
Butter
Carries the heat for frying and adds richness and browning to the meat.
Eggs
Help the bread crumb coating stick to the rabbit joints as a binder.
Bread crumbs
Form a crisp golden coating on the rabbit during frying.
Liver
Adds depth and body to the sauce.

The step that matters

Frying the rabbit joints until golden brown. Rabbit is lean and dries out easily, so frying over medium heat for the stated time browns the surface without overcooking the meat. Browning also builds the flavourful drippings used for the gravy.

Swap the parsley

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (rabbit, butter, egg, bread, liver, pepper):

  1. Parsleythe original
  2. Sagefits about as well
  3. Nutmegfits about as well
  4. Thymefits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against rabbit, butter, egg, bread, liver, pepper. 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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