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Fried Rabbit

Fried rabbit with lemon gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Fried Rabbit

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the rabbit

  1. Blanch the rabbit in boiling water for 5-7 minutes, then drain and let cool.

  2. Cut the rabbit into joints, dip each in beaten egg, then coat with seasoned bread crumbs.

Fry and make the sauce

  1. Fry the joints in butter over medium heat for 12-15 minutes until golden brown.

  2. Simmer lemon rind in gravy until flavored, then boil the rabbit liver for 5 minutes and mince it.

  3. Thicken the gravy with butter and flour, add the minced liver, and boil for 1 minute.

  4. Stir in cream and lemon juice, then pour the sauce over the fried rabbit 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. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  2. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

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
Provides the main meat, which is cooked through by blanching and then browned by frying.
Eggs
Bind the bread crumb coating to the rabbit joints so it adheres during frying.
Bread crumbs
Form a crisp, golden coating that browns when the joints are fried in butter.
Butter
Fries the coated joints and, with flour, thickens the gravy into a smooth sauce.
Flour
Thickens the gravy together with butter, giving the sauce body.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich gravy and liver sauce.

The step that matters

Fry the joints until golden brown. Frying over medium heat browns the egg and crumb coating while the meat cooks through. Too high a heat can scorch the crumbs before the joints are cooked inside, while too low a heat leaves the coating pale and greasy.

Swap the lemon

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

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

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